21 August 2023 , 08:39
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A duo of best friends take annual trips abroad where they tour picturesque locations and party all night long for just £70.
Darena Bradshaw, 20, from Leeds, and her best friend, Yasmin Lovatt, 26, from Birmingham, have visited three countries on 24-hour trips so far and continue to add to their list year after year.
The pair visited Krakow, Poland, for their most recent trip and spent just £30 on flights and £5 on accommodation each for the night. Their annual trips began three years ago when the duo decided to make their birthday celebrations more exciting by booking cheap getaways to some of Europe's most desired locations.
Darena, also an entrepreneur and Yasmin's business partner, said: "We started doing this as an alternative to a birthday present each year and would book a mystery trip for each other to the cheapest destination. When we get to the location, we make sure to do the hostel bar crawl and then go for food, get drunk, and have a good time in the process.
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The pals take annual trips abroad for just £70, (@letsdrinktothatgame/ CATERS NEWS)
They say the trips are cheaper than a night out (@letsdrinktothatgame/ CATERS NEWS)"Going abroad is so much cheaper and so much more fun than a night out in the UK - the people are nicer, drinks are cheaper, and most of the time the weather is better. To pick the locations, we type the dates into Skyscanner and book the cheapest most 'fun looking' place.
"My advice would be for people who want to try these trips to always look on Skyscanner and don't be afraid of staying in hostels. You meet the coolest people in them, and it's the cheapest way of travelling."
Fitting holidays into small time windows seems to be an increasingly popular trend as people look to make the most of cheap travel. recently a group of friends told the Mirror how they'd embarked on a rapid world tour that they had managed to fit around their busy work schedules.
Alex Hempton and four friends embarked from London on a trip of a lifetime. With limited annual leave from his job in marketing and the others in similar positions, they decided to condense a typical gap-year's worth of travelling into just 16 days.
Alex embarked on the whistle-stop tour in July (Alex Hempton)
He wanted to see as much of the world as possible while holding down a full-time job (Alex Hempton)By looking for cheap flights and being very open with their destinations, they've managed to plan a route through Europe, Africa, the Middle East and south Asia that will set them back just £1,150 each, with accommodation - the equivalent of £71 a day. The journey is not eco friendly however, with a lot of flying along the 16,600 mile route, and pushed the pals to their limits.
On one punishing leg from the Maldives to Malaysia the group managed to bag just six hours sleep in three days spent hurtling across the Indian Ocean and sleeping in airports. "The main premise is it is with all my friends who are working and studying, and it's hard to get people together for months at a time," Alex told the Mirror. "I got them free for two and a half weeks and went on SkyScanner and clicked London to everywhere, to see what comes up."
Alex was inspired to organise the trip having completed a mini-version last November, when he headed from Edinburgh to locations including Vienna, Sofia, Abu Dhabi, Sicily, Rome and Morocco. He decided to do a longer version, with the main constraints being that it had to be reasonably priced, fit into a couple of week's holiday, and give them enough time to see a little of each spot. Six hours on SkyScanner with the 'London to everywhere' option toggled took Alex deep into the night plotting a route.