It has been a long time since I have posted my last entry. Well I hope I will be able to make up to it, by a series of posts about a trip to the Netherlands. My first post will be about my flight there.
We have found the cheapest way to get to the Netherlands from Genova, was by a flight taken from Milano to Eindhoven with Ryanair. It was the first time I have flied with Ryanair, although I did some air-traveling before. For those who do not know yet, Ryanair is Europe’s biggest low-cost airline company with 190+ planes (and still counting). It is based in Dublin, Ireland, thus the logo with the harp. We were lucky to find a very cheap flight, €20.00 + €52.00 for a round-trip flight, so we decided to give it a try.
Ryanair has recently canceled the possibility to check-in at the airport, so we were forced to do an on-line check-in at most 15 days before or at least 4 hours before our scheduled flight. It basically means that we had to print out our tickets in advance and present it at the airport. I was very curious how the on-line check-in works at Ryanair, especially because we have also had bags to check-in.
Well, when we arrived at the airport, we noticed that the check-in desks still exist, we still had to go there and ask the nice lady to put the stickers on our bags. The only difference was, that we only had to present our ticket together with a valid ID. Everything was the same as with normal check-in. At the boarding gate a part from the printed ticket was cut (so be careful, print each of your tickets on a separate sheet of paper if you have a return flight also…).
Finally we got onto the plane… I have already traveled low-cost with WizzAir, and I must say I was very pleased with it. WizzAir only operates Airbus A320-200 aircrafts (24 and counting), while Ryanair only Boeing 737-800 planes… this was very visible in the inside also. WizzAir’s Airbus seemed much larger from the inside, not to mention the legroom, which was very tight on Ryanair’s Boeing. The overall feeling in Ryanair’s cabin feels… well, low-cost (compared to WizzAir’s very comfy and slightly more spacious leather seats). Everything else was pretty much as expected: the air hostesses a bit above average, the ride pretty smooth (apart from the landing which was quite bumpy when we landed in Eindhoven in a very sunny day).
All in all, Ryanair is a pretty good choice, especially with their price-range… if there would be, however, a WizzAir option also, I’d pay the extra few euros for it…