Making Flying Easier With An Overnight Stay

I've never been someone who is frightened of flying and as a whole, aeroplanes don't bother me at all and I actually quite like the holiday buzz that you can feel when you're in an airport. However, although they don't make me nervous, there's no doubt about the fact that flying and travelling to your holiday destination can be a bloody pain. It can be boring, exhausting and draining and as I always travel from Manchester Airport, I have the two and a half hour drive to look forward to as well. Last week, our flight to Barcelona was at 6:00am and with the long drive from Durham included, we'd need to set off at around 1:30am to give us enough time to get there and get sorted. Not a fun journey even when you're only travelling to your local airport at that time! That's why we've started booking a night in an airport hotel the day before we travel and Holiday Inn Manchester Airport is our favourite we've stayed in yet.

One of the reasons that staying at the airport overnight makes flying easier is that you can set off in your own time with no panic. I don't know about anyone else but I have this morbid fear of getting lost or stuck in traffic and missing my flight so being so close to the airport helps take the stress off a little bit, especially when you're far from home. Holiday Inn Express is just two miles from the airport itself so our taxi only cost £6 and I got to park my car in the Holiday Inn car park for £5 per day, a price which I thought was really good as it meant it only cost us £20 in total to park the car. We drove down the day before our flight without the mad rush you usually have in getting to the airport and checked into our room and it was huge. I love big hotel rooms that you can relax in and we had a huge, comfy bed, a nice couch in the corner, a really big shower and generally enough room to really chill and get sorted before our journey, something which we were so ready for after the long drive.

Another reason why I think staying overnight at the airport makes flying easier is that it means your first day on holiday is dampened by you being exhausted. We flew to Rome at 6:00am without staying overnight and set off from my house at midnight meaning we missed a whole night of sleep and you really feel like crap the next day, something which isn't ideal when you're trying to enjoy a new place. We got ourselves an early night and although we still had to be up at 3:30am, we felt absolutely fine and could still completely enjoy our first day in the wonderful city of Barcelona.

Travelling makes me so hungry and luckily the Holiday Inn has a restaurant on site so after we'd got settled into our room we headed down for a little snack. I had some filo prawns and sweet chilli dip (my FAV by the way), Karl had some chicken wings and we shared a good ol' portion of chips and it was really lovely. We were served straight away, the food was reasonably priced and we didn't even have to leave the hotel.

We've stayed in Holiday Inn's a few times now and we actually really like them. They may be a chain, budget hotel brand but they don't compromise on quality and that's what I love about them. We stayed in the Holiday Inn Express Times Square in New York in March and we honestly couldn't have asked for a better stay so I knew we'd like this one just as much (well, apart from the fact it isn't in New York haha!) Staying made our early flight so much easier and smoother and the staff were lovely, phoning us our taxi and helping out wherever they could. Oh and the wifi is fast and free, something which you don't often get in budget hotels!

What do you do to make your long journeys easier?

Amy x

*P|R relationship. All words and views remain my own.