City break -who to book with?

[Datgal]

Hi.
Not travelled much since the pandemic, mainly UK holidays.
And a bit skint this year. However have some time off in September, and was thinking about a European city break. And not fussed where tbh!!
Always booked flights and accommodation separately, but since been stung by Ryanair during the pandemic, we couldn't get our money back. So prefer a little package deal.
Anybody have any suggestions about good sites to book from? Any recommendations of who to book with? I've checked easyJet and Jet2.
Thanks! 😁

Thessaloniki. Absolutely incredible city. Have no idea why more people don't have weekend there. Great culture, food, history in spades. Jet2 definitely fly there

Thank you, will have a look 👍🏼

We had a fabulous trip to Malaga with Easyjet holidays recently. And it’s a very reasonable city to eat and drink out.

I also use BA Holidays quite a lot but you do need to book in advance to get the good deals. I booked 9 months in advance for our recent trip and then checked 2 months before departure and the price had doubled!

Go with BA. Just add a hotel. They usually have a decent price. It also turns it into a package holiday. BA usually have decent flight times too.

I have just booked with Jet2 city breaks. Very reasonable.

@Startuplife
Thats due to popularity of the flight and seats remaining. Probably very few. However destinations are different. Not all sell out and less popular ones remain at a competitive price. I like playing with flight times too! I don’t want early starts!!

Nice is one of the cheaper flight routes. I saw good package deals to Monaco with Travel Zoo.

I would use Jet2, can't fault them so far and have used them a number of times.

I really rate Jet2 and have had several Jet2 holidays. We went to Rome with them.

Jet2 are excellent

Jet2 we’re good before pandemic

It depends where you are. Jet2 if you're in northern England/Scotland, midlands, or can go from Stanstead.

BA if you want to go from Heathrow or Gatwick.

Easyjet if Luton, or possibly Liverpool or Manchester are your preferred airports.

One way to reduce the cost would be to look at the 'I'll go anywhere' option on Skyscanner, sort by lowest price first for your preferred month, then look in more detail on the airline website that has cheap flights from an airport that works for you.

One of our 'lost to the pandemic and we haven't yet rearranged' city breaks was to Berlin. We got very cheap flights with Easyjet, the hotel wasn't particularly bargain basement, but we picked a nice one in a central location so could have got accommodation for less and we were planning on mostly just mooching round looking at stuff and eating takeaways/street food rather than restaurant meals so could have had a good time without spending a huge amount.

Takeaways and street food wouldn’t equal a good time for me. Eating out in a good restaurant is part of the experience.

When I was looking to book a city break recently, Madrid came up very cheap. DH and I would have happily gone there but my grown up kids vetoed it.

Use Eurostar and have a much lower carbon holiday, and more enjoyable travel too. They do packages which were great when I used one many years ago

I had a city break with BA recently and the outward bound flight was cancelled - rearranging was a nightmare because their online system apparently is only for flights only. If you have booked a car/hotel/whatever you have to do it over the phone…which worked fine when I eventually got through to someone, but it took days of calling at different times to get beyond an automatic “we are prioritising customers with cancellations” message and the line going dead. It really put me off using them for a package in the future, to be honest.

Thank you everyone. Looking like easyJet are coming up trumps for where I am (nearest airport Manchester). Prague is what keeps coming up. And yeah, I spotted Madrid trips on Jet2, as well, which I really fancy 😀. Although not sure if that was more going from London. Will have a good look this weekend.

And yes, to street food/cheaper places etc to save money! We always do that tbh, with one night splurge in a decent place.
Always been happy with food. But I'll eat owt.
Our 'lost' break was Lisbon. 🙁