Have you heard of an extreme day trip?
It’s basically a day trip that’s a little bit further afield then the average day trip and usually involves an aeroplane to get there. It’s perfectly possible to visit many places in a day, going out on the first flight of the day and coming back on one of the last flights.
And not only is it possible, it can actually be ridiculously cheap to do this as well because of all the low cost airlines competing for business now.
I first heard about the idea of an extreme day trip a couple of months ago when a group popped up in my Facebook feed which was all about people sharing their own experiences of an extreme day trip and also people share and hints and tips on how to do one and where to find the best bargains
I love travel so the idea of an extreme day trip absolutely fascinated me.
After a couple of weeks I’ve lurking in the background in the group, I decided to go ahead and book a day trip of my own. I decided to book one as a surprise for my partners birthday and after lots of research I decided to book Alicante.
I chose Alicante because the flights were super cheap and gave us a good 10 hours in the city and after some research, it seemed super easy to get from the airport into the city centre. It also helps that the weather in December is generally pretty warm.
So, I booked some very cheap flights (£76 in total for both of us) and presented my lovely partner with a cuddly toy airplane for his Birthday in an effort to explain what his actual present was. He was over the moon with the idea of a day in the sun when it was going to be cold and dark here in the UK so thankfully he was as excited as me with the idea.
As the day too closer, we started to make a few plans.
Car parking at Manchester Airport turned out to be a bit of a problem as the usual car park that we use actually quoted £47 which is almost as much as we paid for the flights. I looked around and compared prices for car parking and the cheapest I could find was actually £40 – for less than 24 hours!! After A bit more research, I found a website called ‘just parks’ where you can book a space when somebody’s drive which we ended up doing for the grand total of £6.
I also did lots of research about Alicante so that I knew in advance where we wanted to go and the order in which we were going to do it. I’m not usually one to plan when we go on holiday as I like to just take it as it comes but with such a limited amount time In the city it felt like a good idea to have a loose itinerary so we could make sure that we got round everything that we wanted to see why we were there.
On the day of our extreme day trip, we got up at 3am which was ridiculously early but necessary to get to the airport in time to check in for the 6.10am flight. We had no baggage but still had to leave enough time to get through security and get to the gate for our flight.
It was super easy and we actually could have gotten there a bit later but you know that if we’d have done that then we’d have had delays at security!
We took off on time and had a super smooth flight, landing in Alicante just before 10am local time. We knew exactly where to go to get the bus into the Alicante and by 10.20 we were sat on the C6 bus heading to the beach.
The day itself was lovely and I don’t want anything that I’m about to say to make you think that I didn’t enjoy the day – it was amazing and paddling in the sea in December with the sun shining down on me was just perfect although the Christmas decorations felt odd and we ended up skipping the Christmas market as it was hard to feel festive with the sun shining as it was.
We walked around 25k steps and by the end of the day, my feet hurt so much – in a good way! We ticked off everything that we’d planned to do other than the Christmas market and even found a couple of extra sights to see as we wandered around the city.
We ended the day watching the most beautiful sunset at the beach enjoying a sangria and a beer before heading back to the airport for our 8.40pm flight.
This is where the day started to get less enjoyable.
We had a 40 minute delay on our flight which isn’t too bad at all but we were already so tired that the time in the airport dragged so much. By that point, we’d been awake for 19 hours with a good few hours left before we would be home and in bed and I really started to flag at this point.
We finally got on the flight and took off but I couldn’t get comfortable so there was no sleep happening for me. I tried but just couldn’t so I ended up just putting my headphones in and watching some stuff I’d downloaded onto my phone. The two and half hour flight felt like about six hours and even when we landed, we had to drive home from the airport.
We were exhausted when we got back to the car and I really worried about my partner driving home as we were at 21 hours awake and about ready to drop. We could barely keep our eyes open so we stopped at the first service station we got to so we could have a little rest.
We literally reclined the seats in our car, locked the doors and slept for an hour and a half in the car park – not my finest moment laid in the car wrapped in coat using another coat as a pillow but without that sleep, neither of us could have driven home.
We arrived home at 4am, 25 hours after leaving the house.
That’s extreme, right?
I don’t know how I feel about another extreme day trip after this one as I just don’t think I’m cut out for such a lack of sleep – the day itself was just perfect and the experience was amazing but the exhaustion that took hold once we got back to the airport was overwhelming and I’m still feeling it now, two days later.
So many people do these extreme day trips and absolutely love them so I don’t want my experience to put you off having a go but I did want to share my own experience so you can plan a day knowing that the reality of an extreme day trip isn’t as glamorous as it sounds…
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