A question on the WARNING: RyanAir Online Check-in thread had me scoping out the insurance policy on offer from the airline when you purchase your ticket. It was there I made the following discoveries:

+ Despite the fact that travel insurance is offered with every RyanAir ticket, only UK and IE residents are actually eligible for coverage. (Read the residency requirements here and here.) The rest of us wouldn’t be covered, even if we’ve purchased the policy.

+ Many people are accidentally tricked into purchasing the coverage by failing to uncheck a box during the online booking process. If you have inadvertently booked travel insurance when purchasing your RyanAir ticket — or, if you now realize you are actually ineligible for the coverage you’ve purchased — you are entitled to a refund within 14 days of purchase and prior to the commencement of travel ONLY. From the RyanAir website:

If you are cancelling your policy within 14 days of purchasing it and you have not commenced travel, you should email Ryanair Direct at insurancerefunds@ryanair.com.

Alternatively you can send a fax to +353 1 609 7902 or write to Ryanair Insurance Refunds Department, Phoenix House, 28 Conyngham Road, Dublin 8, Ireland with your refund request.

Please ensure you quote the Ryanair Booking Reference & flight details, full contact address for the booking and the names & policy numbers of the passengers who wish to cancel within your email.

If you do not fit the above criteria, no refund will be given.

All refunds will be processed to the original form of payment, within 7 days of Ryanair receiving the e-mail.

Still wondering whether or not it makes sense for you to purchase travel insurance? Check out my post To Travel Insure, or Not to Travel Insure? for a discussion of the costs and benefits of different types of policies for no-budget travelers.

Didn’t get enough last week? There’s another free ice cream offer: Häagen-Dazs celebrates its new flavor, Vanilla Honey Bee, on May 13 by giving it away between 4 and 8 p.m.! Find your nearest store and more information under this link.

And if any of you happen to be pregnant and living in California, Chicago, New York, Nashville, or El Paso, you are invited to Baskin Robbins’ Bump Day on May 21. Expecting moms can claim their free soft serve cone between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. Be sure to print out this coupon before heading out!

For the rest of you who aren’t pregnant or live on the wrong continent to get free ice cream, enjoy instead this video combining these themes:

An unfortunate scenario: you’ve booked yourself on two low-cost flights connecting at London Stansted airport and find yourself with an entire day to kill between them.

Common sense dictates that if you’ve got less than four hours between arrival and the next two-hour check-in window, you simply stay put. There are plenty of restaurants and shops on both sides of security to keep you occupied; sort through your receipts, write out those last-minute postcards, review and label your digital photographs or simply settle in with a book or your iPod. If you’ve got a WiFi-enabled computer, you can purchase one-hour, three-hour or 24-hour internet access from T-Mobile, BTOpenzone or Cloud, with prices ranging from £4.50-10.

If you’ve done the math and have a healthier chunk of time, however, feel free to consider the following five suggestions for interesting and nearby outings, all under £15:

• Audley End House and Gardens: an English Heritage site, exhibiting both upstairs and downstairs life in an impressive country estate. If you’re not excited by lavish tapestries and sumptuous interiors, it is possible to visit just the gardens.

Hours: House open 11-16 in winter, 11-17 in summer; gardens and service wing open one hour earlier and close one hour later. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Closed from Christmas Eve to the end of January.

Price: £9.20 for adults, £4.60 for children, £6.90 for students/seniors; gardens only: £5.50/£2.80/£4.40

Getting there and back: Train station is 1.25 miles from the house. Express trains travel between Stansted and Audley End hourly; travel time: 30 minutes. Cheap day return: £4.

• Cambridge: best known for its world-renowned university, this small city offers numerous and pleasant occupations in both good weather and bad.

Free things to see and do in Cambridge:

+ Fitzwilliam Museum

Hours: 10-17 Tues-Sat, 12-17 Sun. Closed Mondays.

+ Kettle’s Yard

Hours: house 14-16 winter, 1330-1630 summer; gallery 1130-17. Closed Mondays.

+ Cambridge University: some colleges charge admission for visitors, some do not. You can link to each of the colleges and their individual policies from this page.

Hours: vary by college. Visitors are not admitted during the examination period (late April to mid-June).

+ Cambridge Market: daily on Market Square

+ Art and Craft Market

Hours: open every Saturday all year round; additionally Fri in summer months, Wed-Fri in December.

Paid things to see and do:

+ Cambridge University Botanic Gardens

Hours: summer 10-18, shoulder 10-17, winter 10-16.

Price: Adults £4, Seniors and students £3.50, children under 16 free. Entrance is free on weekdays from November through February.

Lots of other ideas (punting, walking tours, etc.) at the Visit Cambridge site.

Insider tip: Save your feet and ride the free City Circle shuttle bus, running every 15 minutes between 0900 and 1700 daily.

Getting there and back: Train station is 1.5 miles from Cambridge center. Trains depart hourly in each direction; travel time: 40 minutes. Cheap day return: £9.90.

Bus station is located in the center city. Buses depart once per hour in each direction; travel time: 50 minutes. Economy return: £12.50.

• Mountfitchet Castle (including Toy Museum and Dinosaur Encounters): a reconstructed Norman castle, with plenty of amusements for smaller visitors.

Price: Adults £8.50, seniors £8, children £6.50

Hours: 10-17 daily, March-November.

Getting there and back: Located next to Stansted Mountfitchet train station. Trains depart hourly in each direction; travel time: 5 minutes. Cheap day return: £2.90.

• Hatfield Forest: a National Trust site exhibiting the unique habitat created by the practice of tree coppicing. When the weather is good, come here to catch a little sun or enjoy a picnic.

Admission free

Hours: daily, dawn till dusk.

Getting there and back: Hourly local bus service. This is the most comprehensive description available, giving directions from a number of stops and nearby locations, though I feel it makes little sense to anyone who’s not from there.

• Bishop’s Stortford Town Library: more comfortable than sitting in the airport, with all the regular offerings of a library and free WiFi access for laptop-toting visitors.

Hours: Weekdays 9-20, Tues 10-20, Sat 9-16, Sun 13-17.

Getting there and back: Walking directions from the Bishop’s Stortford train station. Trains depart every half hour in each direction; travel time: 10 minutes. Cheap day return: £4.20.

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What is a cheap day return? These tickets allow a return journey between the airport and your intended destination on one calendar day, usually for departures after 9 or 9:30 a.m. Conditions may vary by carrier and route — check to make sure your ticket does not have limitations on afternoon peak travel as well.

Wondering what to do with your luggage? Stansted Airport offers left luggage facilities for £5/bag/day. True cheapos will just tote it along, leaving it for free at the coat check any site they visit.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy
Baring My Budget: London
Baring My Budget: London, Take 2
No-Budget Tips for London and Stockholm, Revisited
Navigating London Stansted Airport
Why I Love/Hate RyanAir

Berlin Schoenefeld (DE)

PAN: airport design — both to the gate and from the plane — incorporates too many staircases without escalators or lifts, inconveniencing travelers with rolling suitcases, strollers, and mobility problems. Have their architects never flown before?

London Stansted (UK)

PICK: the airport has created a “security repacking area” at the end of check-in aisle B (near security entrance 8 ) with long tables and three scales so you can proof your luggage and adjust as needed before heading to the check-in counter. There should be one of these at EVERY airport!

Girona Barcelona (ES)

PAN: they not only have no scale available for general customer use, they also have a (cross-airline) policy of not courtesy weighing suitcases at empty counters.

Newquay Cornwall (UK)

PAN: tiny arrival passport control area leaves 70% of a plane’s passengers waiting on the jetway in the cold.

PAN: as previously posted, an unmentioned “departure tax” leaves unsuspecting travelers coughing up £5 each just to get out the door.

PAN: worst security checkpoint ever, with a single person collecting “departure tax” tickets, checking boarding passes, telling passengers to remove their coats and empty their pockets, as well as sorting out what needs to go in the x-ray bins. Halfway through the line, they began enforcing an unannounced one-bag rule. Despite arriving 80 minutes early, the check took so long I walked straight from the security line onto the plane!

Have you flown through a secondary airport that astonished you with its efficiency? Been disappointed by cleanliness or starved while waiting for overdue flights? Share your own picks and pans in the comments.

First up this Monday is musician Marie from Canada, who is trying to fly on RyanAir with two violins and a guitar. She writes,

Hi, I’ve been trying to talk to someone from Ryan Air for the past 3 weeks and it’s impossible! My question is about carrying musical instruments in the cabin. They say you must purchase a seat, but we have 3 instruments (2 violins & 1 guitar), the violins are small so they’d fit into one seat no problem … are we supposed to purchase 3 seats for the instruments? I’m sure we’d actually fit all 3 if they were in a seat next to ours (there’s 4 of us travelling). Anyway, if anybody knows anything about this I would very much appreciate it.

Have you flown RyanAir with multiple small instruments before? Feel free to chime in here.

RyanAir’s policy on instruments currently reads as follows:

Large musical equipment . . . may be carried in the hold of the aircraft in addition to your personal checked baggage allowance upon payment of an additional discounted fee per item, per one way flight if booked at the time of reservation. Smaller musical items such as a guitar, cello, violin or viola which exceed our cabin baggage dimensions may be carried in the cabin if a seat for it has been reserved and the appropriate fare paid. There is no checked baggage allowance associated with the purchase of an extra seat.

Due to space restrictions, we recommend that all musical equipment is pre-booked and pre-paid at the time of booking . . . as not to do so may result in the item being refused carriage at the airport.

My advice to Marie is to measure the violin cases and see if they are indeed small enough to count as simple hand luggage (current dimensions 55cm x 40cm x 20cm). If they are, you only need to buy a seat for the guitar. If not, you will surely be in the right only by buying seats for all three. If the tickets you are looking at are over 30 euros, you may consider — depending on the sturdiness of your cases and your own risk aversion — checking the instruments, as there is a flat fee for carrying them in the hold.

Next up is reader Jen in Paris, whose recent flight to New York on Air India was delayed by eight hours. She had contacted me about her EU passenger rights, and I pointed her to my previous post on this subject, “Over Two-Hour Delay in Europe? Get 250 Euros.” Jen wrote again today after doing a little research of her own — it appears the Airfare Watchdog, from whose site I had taken the interpretation, was incorrect in his reading of the law. I’ve corrected the original post, but for the lazy, here’s what you need to know:

• If your flight is CANCELED less than 7 days before scheduled departure and the alternate flight leaves more than one hour later, arriving more than two hours later — then you are entitled to 250 euros for intra-european flights, 400 euros for longer flights;
• compensation similar to the above is due passengers who are involuntarily BUMPED from flights; 1/2 of the aforementioned amounts are awarded when passengers arrive within two hours of their scheduled arrival time;
• If your flight is DELAYED (over two hours intra-european, over three hours for longer flights), you are entitled to meal coupons, phone calls and paid overnight stays as necessary. After five hours, you have the right to request a full refund of the unused portion of the ticket with a free return to your departure airport on a multi-leg journey. You may be eligible under national laws for compensation for costs incurred by your delay or cancellation (i.e. for hotels etc. on the other end of your trip); however, the EU law in question DOES NOT GRANT DELAYED TRAVELERS RIGHTS TO COMPENSATION.

Updated links to resources on this issue have been added at the original post.

That’s all for this edition. If *you* have specific questions, updates or comments, feel free to contact me directly.

Are you a flashpacker too? I was inspired by this post I unearthed at EuroCheapo when researching for my last trip to put together a list of free WiFi points across Europe. After the jump, find a resource with links to lists, maps and addresses where you can get online with your laptop in Europe’s capital cities. Feel free to add your own links to other major cities in the comments.

First, all the cities that have real, honest-to-goodness *free* access in a public space — often municipally provided — to the internet:

• Athens
• Berlin
• Bern
• Brussels 1 (prior software download required)
• Helsinki
• Luxembourg
• Madrid
• Paris
• Rome 1 (mobile number required)
  

Next, all the cities where you shouldn’t have to hunt too hard to find an WLAN-friendly cafe or chain restaurant offering online access:

• Bratislava
• Brussels 2
• Budapest
• Copenhagen
• London
• Moscow
• Prague
• Riga
• Sofia
• Tallinn
• Vienna
• Warsaw

It’s harder than it should be in:

• Amsterdam
• Dublin
• Lisbon
• Ljubljana
• Oslo
• Rome 2
• Stockholm
• Vilnius

It’s not impossible, but best of luck to you in:

• Bucharest
• Malta
• Nicosia
• Reykjavik

Errors, out of date, links not working? Leave a comment and I’ll fix it!

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Getting to and from Stansted Airport Cheaply

If you want to save money on airport transportation, moral of the story is: BOOK EARLY and ONLINE.

Absolute cheapest when booked in advance is easyBus, where you can snag fares as low as £4 each way (plus 25p booking fee). Since planning for my own trip, they have changed both their price structure and their drop-off points; fares are higher across the board, but they have capped them at £13, offering the choice of Baker Street or Victoria Station in central London. Leaves every 20-30 minutes.

• EasyBus uses minibuses and relies on advance bookings; therefore, there is no guarantee that space will be available for walk-up purchase. Walk-up fares are currently £8 one-way.

Next cheapest option is Terravision, offering a flat £13 return when booked online to Victoria Station or Liverpool Street. Leaves every 30-60 minutes.

• The same return fare purchased at their airport counter will cost £14. One-way fares for £8, no matter where booked.

National Express will transport you for £17 return, stopping at Baker Street, Marble Arch and Victoria Station. Departures every 20 minutes. Search the web for current discount codes to save yourself an additional 5-10%.

• National Express is the only carrier offering 24-hour service. Fares (excluding discount codes) are the same whether purchased online or on-the-spot.

You’ll save £2 online when booking your Stansted Express tickets to Tottenham Hale (£22 return) or Liverpool Street (£24 return). If you’re flying RyanAir, save even more by purchasing return tickets from your flight attendants for £20 return. Departures four times per hour.

Seeing the Tates

Not only do the Tate Britain and Tate Modern offer free admission, they also offer free guided tours up to five times daily.

The Tate Britain shows you around at 12 and 15 everyday, with additional tours weekdays at 11 and 14. There is an additional guided interpretation of the “painting of the month” Tuesdays at 1315 and Saturdays at 1430.

The Tate Modern offers tours at 11 and 12 (meeting on level 3) and 14 and 15 (meeting on level 5) every day of the week.

Even more fun is the first Friday of every month, where the Tate Britain stays open till 22; from 18-22 runs its “Late at Tate” program, with drinks, performances, music, talks, films, and half-price exhibition entry on offer. Check out the website for more details.

Wellcome Collection

The photo exhibition “Life Before Death” (which you may have seen featured on Kottke or Dooce) is showing until the 18 May at the Wellcome Collection, near Euston Station. Admission to all exhibitions is free. The galleries are open from 10-18, Thursdays till 22. Closed Mondays.

Need an UK Plug Adapter?

Boots offers a wide variety of US-UK, Euro-UK and reverse plug adapters for only £2-3 in their electrical or travel section. If you’re flying through Stansted, Boots is handily located in the insecure area at the end of check-in aisle B or in the secured area in the far left corner of the main terminal building. If necessary, you can also purchase replacement toiletries for anything confiscated by security.

Arriving to/Departing from London after Midnight and before 0530

Well, Cinder(f)ella, the Tube turns into a pumpkin overnight and you’ll have to become familiar with the city’s network of night buses. Use the official Journey Planner to figure out the closest or fastest route between two points.

Have you gone to get your free Ben and Jerry’s yet? Get thee to the closest scoop shop and enjoy!

There is one month left to submit your conversion fee refund claim. If you’ve spent or withdrawn more than $2500 in foreign transactions since 1996, you will receive a larger refund by itemizing; any amount under that is eligible for a straight-up $25 refund. Seriously — free money! Find all the details here.

Finally, the end is drawing nigh for IcelandAir passengers from MSP to book their amazing $10 add-ons. These are remarkable discounts on popular tours and services, from a spa visit to whale watching to the Reykjavik Card. The offer is good through April 30 on all flights from MSP throughout May.

Another five days in London, including flights to/from Berlin, once again cost me under £100. How did I do it? I lay my budget bare and reveal the winner of the Reader Tips contest for London after the jump.

Transportation Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

+ Flights to/from Berlin (RyanAir): 23 euros

+ Berlin ABC ticket to Schoenefeld Airport, return: 5.50 euros

+ Oyster card (for public transport): £20

+ Stansted bus to Victoria Station, return: £14

Subtotal: 28.50 euros and £34

Food and Drink Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

+ Groceries: £25.35

Subtotal: £25.35

Other Costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

+ Airline luggage fee: 13 euros

+ Host gift: 1.70 euros

Subtotal: 14.70 euros

TOTAL: £59.35 and 43.20 euros

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Here’s how I occupied myself across London without spending one red cent:

+ five nights accommodation (with friends)

+ two free movie showings (comp tickets from a friend working at a cinema on Leicester Square)

+ free museums: Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Kenwood House, Photographer’s Gallery

+ free parks: Battersea Park, Lincoln in the Fields Park, Hampstead Heath

+ a walk from Hampstead to Aldgate, outlined in my guidebook

This trip followed my typical no-budget rules: free accommodation, ride public transport (£4-5/day), eat only groceries (£5/day), do lots of cheap or free activities. A daily budget of £10 ($20) is similar to what I spent in the fall. Here were the major shifts in spending between the two trips:

• In the fall, I spent 2 cents on my flights; in the spring, 23 euros (in reality, the flights were again 2 cents, but RyanAir tacked on both taxes and fees for the “no taxes, no fees” sale).

• In the fall, I spent £15 on admissions fees; in the spring, £0.

There is still so much free stuff I didn’t see and do that I am certain to visit again before the year is through, so feel free to leave additional ideas for cheapo fun in the comments.

Winner of the Reader Tips contest for London is Pierre Van Eck, whose advice included a continuously updating list of free things to do in London as well as a tip for Stansted-area tourism. Thanks Pierre!

Stay tuned this week for more London-related advice from the road, as well as a feature on daytrips from Stansted Airport.

Liked this post? Try these other budgets on for size:
Baring My Budget: Malta
Baring My Budget: Stockholm
Baring My Budget: Hamburg
Baring My Budget: Venice
Budget Analysis: NY Times’ “Frugal Traveler”
Budget Analysis: NYT “Frugal Traveler,” Part Deux

Looking for more London advice? See
Baring My Budget: London
No-Budget Tips for London and Stockholm, Revisited
Navigating London Stansted Airport

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

Readers in the northern hemisphere have already had their first taste of spring (between spells of bad weather), while those in the south are watching autumn slowly wind towards winter. Here is your chance to enjoy your first/last ice cream outing of the season on the house: April 29th is Ben and Jerry’s annual Free Cone Day! U.S. and Canadian residents, find your nearest scoop shop here; international readers feeling neglected by my recent freebies will find 150 international locations where they can gorge themselves here.

Americans without a Ben and Jerry’s nearby may have better luck with Baskin Robbins; their 31-cent scoop night takes place April 30th. Details here.