What could be better than visiting one of the world's most vibrant travel destinations? Visiting two of them, of course.
You can soak in the bright lights of the Eiffel Tower and see the historic Buckingham Palace up close and personal for less than the price you'd pay to visit just one of these landmarks.
While it may seem counterintuitive, booking a round-trip flight from Vancouver International Airport (YVR) to London Heathrow Airport (LHR) or Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) costs more than the price you pay to fly into one and then depart out of the other - and that's even including a train ride connecting the two capital cities.
Booking a trip in the spring will also allow you to score a ticket that's about half the price you'd pay for travel during the peak summer months. Plus, you won't be elbowing your way through crowds to visit attractions (lines at the Louvre are no joke in the Parisian heat).
How to book a multi-city itinerary including Paris and London from Vancouver
While tickets need to be booked separately to get the best deal, you may be able to search for them in Google Flights together. To do this, select "multi-city" rather than "round-trip" or "one-way" in the top left-hand drop-down menu above your destination field. If you use the travel dates in this story, you'll be able to get the same ticket price while the deal is available.
If you want to search for other dates, you won't be able to see ticket prices by Google Flights in the price calendar the way that you can for one-way or return trips. In this case, you'll want to search for your trip in "one-way" flights to see where the cheap dates are.
Here is how this was done to get this ultra-low-cost dual-city option. The first leg of the trip is a one-way from YVR to LHR that departs on Monday, April 22 at 11:15 a.m. It makes two stops en route to France in Kelowna and Calgary and each of them is around three hours. If this is inconvenient, you can toggle the options to include only one stop but the price of the flight will increase (see the second and third slides for details).
The total cost based on this two-stop itinerary from Vancouver to London is $255 with third-party supplier BudgetAir. The price is $548 cheaper than usual, according to Google Flights.
Booking a flight from Paris, France to Vancouver
Once you have found a low-cost option that works for your outbound flight, pair it with home coming home from Paris. A flight that returns to Vancouver from Paris a couple of weeks after the aforementioned one costs $393 with third-party supplier Kiwi.com. The price is $599 cheaper than usual, according to Google Flights.
This itinerary only includes one stop in Calgary which is under two hours (see the fourth slide for details).
The price for the two flights totals $648 with WestJet. The best price for a return trip from Vancouver to London around this time is $727 while one to Paris is $856.
There are a few different options to get from London to Paris but a convenient one is the Eurostar train. It offers a direct option that only takes just about two and a half hours and costs $84 in the evening (see the fifth slide for details).
Europe also has a couple of budget airlines that offer the route for under $100 but travellers often find these options less convenient as they involve moving through airport security and possible delays.
