This is our 5th budget trip to Italy over the last few years as a family. Our longest being a 16 night trip around Italy by train which I still need to write up. This was just a mini break to get our Italy fix, but at this price we couldn't pass it up!
In this trip report, I'll tell you everything about our short break and give you tips on how to create your own holiday to Italy on a budget.
So as a family we are actually now classed as 3 adults and 3 children as my eldest child turned 18 recently. The children's ages at the time of this trip were 14, 12 and 8. The pricing is therefore based on this.
As a large family, staying in hotels often means needing to pay for 2 rooms which gets costly. We've therefore learnt over the years to find different types of accommodation which are not only more budget friendly, but also give us far more space to spread out too.
But its not all bad, as a family of 6 we can also benefit from 'economies of scale', so when we do rent an apartment or take a taxi transfer for instance, that cost is split between 6, often makes our trips cheaper per person than a smaller family.
Before we even decide we are going anywhere, I regularly scan for cheap flights to see if there are any bargain deals to be had using the flight search tool on our own website that is powered by Skyscanner.
I usually input 'Italy' in to the 'To' box rather than a specific city so I can see the cheapest destinations.
Once the results are produced, I then refine the search to check by the whole month by selecting 'Flexible Dates' and searching again.
From there it will show the cheapest cities to visit that month
You can then select a city and have a play around selecting outbound and return combinations
I must admit most the time we have no plans to go anywhere and purely decide to take a break due to finding a deal that we don't want to pass up. So in the most part, our holidays away are never booked more than 6-8 weeks beforehand.
Typically flights are at their cheapest when they are first released, which is usually around 9 months before departure. Budget airlines (which are our 'go to') release their Summer and Winter schedules in one big drop which are often too far in advance for us.
However, these lower prices may only be cheap for a matter of an hour or so before the prices rise substantially and stay high for the next few months. Prices then start to drop again around 2 months before departure when the airline realises that the plane will be flying with a lot of empty seats!
This is different from booking totally last minute, say a few days or even a week before, when airlines know that their will be people desperate to book for a particular date and they hike the prices to their highest yet to capitalise.
We have found that the optimum time to book a last minute break is roughly 4-6 weeks before departure to get the best price.
So for the flights, we booked on 8th March and the departure date was 7th April. At the time EasyJet had some amazing prices for Italy with seats priced at just £1.99 per person, I literally couldn't believe my eyes when I saw them pop up on the site as they weren't running any specific promotions on their website.
Of course for adults, the flights still attracted the £13 Air Passenger Duty per person, making them £14.99 each. So in total 3 adult flights and 3 children's flights from Manchester to Turin, we paid just £50.94 in total- £8.49 per person!!
The price to return flight from Turin was substantially more, which is usually the case when you find a cheap outbound flight (eye roll!). However, as we like to travel to a few places when in Italy, its rare that we will return from the same airport we fly in to anyway.
Once we had found our cheap outbound flight, I then did a full search of all the airports in Italy for the day we wanted to return home. I found that flights from Verona, this time with Ryanair, were the cheapest, coming out at £168.24 for 3 adults and 3 children- just £28.04 per person.
The total price therefore for the return flights was £36.53 per person- not bad for a school holiday break!
So this was our route set, we were flying in to Turin on 7th April and going home from Verona on 11th April. I then just needed to figure out the bits in between.
Now our children are older, all are capable of sitting on their own, we never reserve seats for European flights and take our chances. This keeps the costs down substantially.
EasyJet allow you to check in 30 days beforehand and by making sure we do so, we've never been split up despite not paying for seats and I think we've taken at least 20-30 EasyJet flights over the years with the kids.
Ryanair are slightly different, in that children age 12 and under are allocated a free pre-booked seat along with 1 parent. We have one child that is still under 12, so on our return flight our youngest child was allocated a seat with myself as soon as we purchased our tickets. Check in opens 24 hours beforehand for everyone else. The rest of the party were all split up over 4 rows that were next to each other, which was completely fine as it's only a short flight from Manchester.
In terms of taking luggage, we just don't, it's that simple. Hold luggage would have been more than the actual flights and really for a 4 day trip do you really need any more than a backpack? Years ago I would have taken 2-3 cases and packed everything but the kitchen sink but as I've travelled more frequently I've learned to be ruthless and just pack what we need.
Plus when you're travelling from place-to-place by train, its far more practical (and safety conscious) to each have everything just a backpack so that everyone can manage their own and you can keep your stuff with you at all time.
Obviously, my children are older now and with little ones, this probably isn't as practical, but my youngest manages her back pack fine and if it does get too heavy, its not much more for another adult to carry.
When we did our 16 day trip round Italy, we inevitably needed to take hold luggage, but we stuck to the one backpack each and just took one large suitcase between the six of us so I'm not saying we never travel with suitcases but if we can avoid it, we do.
Or pre-order them to collect at boots after security. 100ml bottles and miniatures are no good for a family of 6 anyway, so its far more practical (and cheaper) for us to buy full sized versions online and collect them before departing.
we have a few cloth re-usable Boots bags that we have picked up at the airport on previous visits. You are allowed one bag of items purchased at the airport per person as part of your allowance (yes even with the budget airline carriers). Quite often we'll use this bag to put in a few other bits if we're struggling to get everything in our backpacks and put the toiletries or meal deal purchased at the airport on top. We have done this for years and no one has ever checked what's in the bags. On the way home if we don't have space in backpacks, we'll grab a drink and ask to buy a bag at the airport abroad (don't try using the Boots back home as most airports abroad don't have a Boots!)
We use travel vacuum bags for all our clothes. These come with a hand held pump, so when you're re-packing abroad, you can still get the air out without a hoover. We have used these on nearly every trip over the last 3 years and they are the best purchase I've ever made. The difference in what you can get in a backpack, when using one of these is incredible. For more info on these click here
We make sure we have the correct sized bags- the dimensions for EasyJet and Ryanair are slightly different, in that EasyJet offers a slightly larger allowance. I make sure our bags fit the Ryanair criteria, so that I'm confident I can use them on every flight. I made the investment a few years back and we have had our moneys worth on our various travellers. Get the bag here
Write what you're going to wear each day, obviously take one or two spare items in case of spillages. Take items that can be mixed and matched and just take your most comfortable shoes that you can wear with any outfit- wear these to go in to give you maximum space in your bag.
These have been used on every trip we've ever done in Italy. I usually just take 3-4 sheets out of the packet and pop them in a food bag in my luggage to save space. They are great for hand washing (use half of one) or you can you can use them in a washing machine. By takin these, we can minimise what we take and wash essentials mid way through our break. Find these here
Following on from the point above, we try to choose accommodation which provides bedding, towels and a washing machine. Before I went to holiday parks in Europe, I didn't even know it was a thing to not supply bedding! By having a washing machine, we take the minimum underwear, pjs and basics and wash/dry them every few days to use again.
After touching down in Turin (Caselle Airport) we breezed through security, making it from the plane doors to arrivals in just 15 minutes. Getting to the city centre from the airport was a piece of cake. Since it's a relatively small airport, finding our way was simple. We followed the signs in the arrivals for the train, and voila! The station (Torino Aeroporto di Caselle) was right across from the airport exit, with trains departing every 30 minutes.
We purchased our tickets online from trainline.com whilst stood on the platform for just £3.12 each—no need to queue at ticket machines, change the language on the machine or validate tickets. The 25-minute journey took us into the heart of Turin (Turino Porta Nuova), where a quick check of Google Maps led us to our apartment, just a 10-minute walk from the station. Easy-peasy!
The apartment we found on our website and it cost just £71.84 (£11.97pp) for the night. Our stay for the night- Casa Carlina was located behind a tall door which opened up in to a whole series of apartments round a courtyard, it was very deceptive from the street and would never have know what was there.
The host kept in contact with us before our trip and gave us easy video instructions via WhatsApp on how to obtain the key and gain access.
The apartment slept 6 people comprising of 2 double rooms and a double sofa bed in the living room. We found it to be really well equipped with everything you could possibly need for a stay of any length.
Find the accommodation here (at the time of writing the accommodation is currently not accepting new bookings but click here for other accommodation in Turin
Once settled in we looked round the local area for a takeaway whilst the teens had a shower. We found a little gem round the corner called Pizzeria Assaje that whipped us up a feast of authentic Italian Pizzas, Arancini balls (my favourite- basically a ball of risotto rice with other fillings mixed in such as cheese and meat, then bread crumbed and deep fried ), Bucatini balls (basically the same as the Arancini Balls but with tube like spaghetti instead of rice) and 2 types of chips.
We sat and had a wine outside with the other diners whilst the staff cooked our pizzas, total bliss after a long travel day.
The total coming in at £44 for the food which was amazing for the quality and amount we got. I can't even tell you how happy I was with the cloth bag they gave us it all in- a special size bag to fit pizza boxes, that obviously came home with me!
After our feast we got an early night, tired from today's travels.
We rose early, packed our belongings, and headed towards the City Centre, just 500 meters away. There, we indulged in a breakfast of traditional Italian pastries and coffee, while the kids savoured homemade milkshakes with cake and fruit salads.
With the temperature already reaching 20 degrees it was beautiful to sit out and enjoy the sun, something we hadn't seen in the UK this Easter. The breakfast was approximately £34 for us all (£5.66 each)
The morning was spent exploring Turin before making our way to the train station around noon to continue our journey. Opting not to book trains in advance, we preferred to take a more relaxed approach.
Our next destination, Pescheria Del Garda, required a train change in Milan. Although purchasing two separate tickets made no difference in price, we decided to split the journey and spend a few hours exploring Milan before catching another train to Lake Garda.
In Italy, there are premium high speed train services offering a high standard of cleanliness, and guaranteed seating, but they come at a higher price. For example, the premium train from Turin to Milan would have cost us £189 for all six of us and taken just 59 minutes. Instead, we chose the regional train, which took 1 hour and 56 minutes but cost only £64.79 for our group (£10.80 each).
In the past we have booked in advance and managed to get the premium trains for a similar price, but as this was a last minute budget trip we sacrificed price over comfort. To be honest the regional trains were ok, we got seats and power sockets and it was clean plus the kids welcomed the slightly longer journey to chill on their gadgets out of the heat.
Upon arrival in Milan around 2pm, we opted to grab lunch. We had plans to indulge in pizza and pasta at our favourite restaurant in Pescheria del Garda later that evening, so we decided to give in and treat the kids to McDonald's to keep them satisfied and save on costs (plus, they'd already spotted Hello Kitty Happy Meals!). The cost was pretty comparable to the UK, paying £37 for 4 adult meals and 2 happy meals (£6.17pp)
Once refreshed, we walked around the area surrounding Milano Centrale Station. I must admit on our last visit we didn't really rate Milan as a city. We have visited the Duomo and Emanuelle Galleria only 12 months previous and the kids were desperate to get to Lake Garda where there is much more there for them to do. We cut Milan short and took the 4pm train to Pescheria Del Garda. Again, we opted for the regional train service to save money, which took 1hr 30 and cost £54.47 (£9.07pp)
All trains we used to the Trainline app to book once within the station. We arrived in Pescheria Del Garda around 5.30pm and walked for 15 minutes to reach our home for the next two nights.
Back in August 2022, we spent a week at Butterfly Camping in Pescheria del Garda, using it as a base for exploring the area. It's an ideal spot, with the train station just a 15-minute walk away, offering connections to Verona, Venice, and Milan, allowing for easy exploration of multiple destinations in one trip.
The campground is also conveniently located just a 10-minute stroll from Pescheria del Garda Town. It boasts two outdoor pools, slides, entertainment for younger children, sports courts, an onsite shop, bar and restaurant, bike and scooter hire, and direct access to the lake. While the facilities are basic, if you enjoy holiday camps in the UK, you'll find plenty to love about what they offer in Italy.
Unfortunately, the pool wasn't open until May when the weather is at a more steady temperature, the kids still loved the site all the same.
We booked the caravan with the camp site direct, opting for the 3 bed deluxe van, paying just £108 for the two nights (£18pp) which included towels and bedding. Again the van was basic but very clean and we spend most the time out on the deck or exploring the area.
Search for Accommodation at Butterfly Camping
In the area there is also Gardaland, a fantastic theme park which also features attractions such as a Legoland Splash Park, Peppa Pig Land and a Sea Life Centre. Tickets are available to purchase here.
Once settled in we had drinks in the bar before heading off to our favourite restaurant in the town- a floating restaurant with the most incredible ambient backdrop. The meals are very reasonably priced and the total cost for 6 meals plus 2 drinks each was £82 £13.66pp)
We hope you've enjoyed reading our blog! Stay tuned for more tales from our Italian adventures in the future. Grazie for following along, check out some of our others!
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