The shortest flight from UK lets you do a European city break in a day (2024)

If you love exploring new places but aren’t keen on flying for hours to get somewhere, the latest travel trend might be right up your street.

TikTokers have been embarking on 24-hour whirlwind city breaks, jetting off around Europe and back within a day, often paying less than you’d expect for the trip.

For instance, we recently heard how one woman paid £50 for return flights to Milan, spending 14 hours in Italy for less than a day out in London.

Dagmara Kedzierska made the savvy trip due to increasingly expensive rail tickets in the UK. It would have cost the 30-year-old over £100 alone to get a return train from her home in Manchester to the capital. So instead, she flew to Milan Bergamo for half the price.

She arrived in Italy at 10:50am, grabbed a pastry for breakfast and then hopped on a £6 train to Varenna to see the beautiful Lake Como and watch the world go by while eating pizza and drinking Aperol spritz, before taking the £6 train back to Milan and hopping on the £2 Metro to see the famous Duomo cathedral.

After exploring the area, she travelled back on the Metro to the station and spent £11 on a train to Malpensa airport for her flight home, arriving back in Manchester at 1am the next day.

Sound exciting? Well, you could certainly take a leaf out of Dagmara’s book and have your own 24-hour adventure.

There are two locations in Europe that have the shortest flights from London, taking just an hour to get to, and these are Brussels and Amsterdam.

For Brussels you’d need to fly from London Heathrow, and for Amsterdam it would be London Stansted. Flights to the former currently start from £45 each-way, and for the latter it’s around £79 for a round-trip with easyjet at the time of writing.

There’s plenty to see and do in each of these fabulous cities. For those considering heading to the capital of Belgium, the Grand Place is a must-see, and is where you’ll find the town hall and the Maison du Roi which is home to the Brussels City Museum and stunning private homes from the 17th Century.

Visitors can also follow the comic strip trail around the city, which features the likes of Tin Tin, Blake and Mortimer, and Billy and Buddy, you can also see one of the tallest buildings in Belgium (the Atomium) and visit Mini-Europe.

In Amsterdam, it’s the canals and the beautiful buildings that flank them that you’ll want to see. There are plenty of canal boat tours, some of which include food and drink, or you could hop on a bike and explore the city that way.

Other attractions include the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum, and foodies have to stop off to nab a Stroopwafel. Yum!

If it’s not speed that you’re after, but a bargain trip, then the cheapest flight available in the UK will take you from Luton Airport to the storybook city of Bydgoszcz in Poland for as little as £29, according to Late Rooms.

The trip will take a little over two hours, but once you arrive you can make the most of your visit by strolling around the Old Town, taking in the impressive Art Nouveau, Gothic, and Renaissance buildings.

Highlights also include Mill’s Island, which is a natural island in the middle of the city, and various museums including the Museum of Soap and History of Dirt.

For just one pound more (£30), tourists can also fly to a number of other destinations from airports across the UK, such as Aalborg in Denmark or Knock in Ireland.

Other popular 24-hour city break destinations include Barcelona, Rome, Almeria in Spain, and Luqa in Malta.

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