Make the Most out of the UK.

Alright guys, today I want to talk about deals for students in the United Kingdom because I must admit, there are tons of them.

NUS Card.

I would like to start with that is called the National Student Union Card, usually simply called NUS Card. With it, you can travel throughout the country and get discounts in places like restaurants and clothing stores. So, for example, if you are enrolled in England but you are traveling to Wales, you can still use it. To be able to find out which stores are included, visit https://www.nus.org.uk/en/nus-extra/discounts/. The cool stuff is that you can also have discounts on travels. For example you can get twenty percent off your National Express bill and ten percent off your Megabus bill. I mean, there is literally a lot for everyone and for every category.

Student Deals.

Sometimes you can get discounts even with your student ID card from your University without an NUS Card. The NUS costs twelve pounds and lasts one year, but you can also purchase cards that last two or three years for a higher price, so if you are in England for a short period of time, maybe on exchange, and you do not want to spend those twelve pounds you can still find some deal for yourself.

Travel on A Budget.

Traveling is the best thing ever, but we all know that from time to time it may be kind of expensive, this is why we usually rely on low cost airlines, like Ryanair and EasyJet. We all know what is going on with Ryanair right now, but the international students’ officer at my University here in England gave us some other advice. There is the low cost Monarch Airlines, which I sadly read that just went bankrupt literally two days ago, but there is also Flybe.

If you want to travel by train you should visit nationalrail.co.uk and what happens is that the website will show you all the possible trains that you can take, but each train belongs to a different company. To be short, trains are private in the UK as far as I understood, so when you select a train and you get redirected to another website everything is working, you are not getting scammed. Look out for the Off-Peak and Super Off-Peaks trains, because they are the cheapest available, you might find really cool deals. I literally found a two hours and twenty minutes ride from London to my City for only six pounds. I am not joking, SIX.

If you want to stay in hostels you should probably know beforehand that everything in the United Kingdom is expensive, at least for me coming from Italy. So, our officer recommended YHA, which I believe stands for "Youth Hostels Association" (http://www.yha.org.uk/). She told us they are usually more affordable than other places. I have not tried it but I will definitely do it if I go to London or elsewhere for more than one night.

Student’s Week.

I do not know if this is something particular to where I am studying or if they pretty much do the same thing throughout the country, but we have something called “Student’s Week”. It is basically a period of time where some shops and restaurants offer discounts to students. I have found some discounts in some restaurants up to fifty percent! Keep your eyes open for these kinds of events.

- Cristian

Photo gallery