Five Ways To Save Money On A Weekend In Turin

Last weekend I had a short two night stay in the Italian city of Turin. The main reason for the stay was to go the World of Tim Burton exhibition (more on that below). But because it was set to be a quick stay me and my friend wanted to keep costs as low as possible. So in this post I’m going to run through some of the ways we tried to save money on a weekend in Turin.

Going back to the reason we went, the exhibition has been travelling the world for a decade. And for that whole time me and my friend have said we wanted to go. But anytime we remembered to check it was in Japan or Brazil or somewhere far away. So as soon as we spotted it would be in Italy we planned a trip. Typically now the exhibition is coming to London from October 2024 for it’s final leg of the decade long tour. So you can bet that I’ll be going again.

How to save money on a weekend in Turin

I paid just under £300 for the trip to Turin which I was happy with. But there are some things you could do to save even more money.

Consider the airport you travel from

I can get a direct train to Gatwick Airport but this cost me about £30 (even booking in advance). Whereas I can get a bus from Luton Airport for about £2. So make sure you consider the price vs the airport location.

In hindsight we might have been able to pay a tiny bit more for the flight and then removed the travel cost to get to the airport. It’s definitely something I’ll consider better next time I travel.

Save money on a weekend in Turin by travelling light

I don’t know when airlines started charging for certain sized carry on bags, but don’t do it if you’re only going for a weekend. Using Skyscanner I checked every variation of long weekend (Friday- Sunday and Saturday- Monday) for the whole of Feb and March to get the best price flights. And the best I could find was £61.08 each return from Gatwick to Turin.

If we wanted to take a larger carry on bag (i.e. a small suitcase) it would have added a lot of money to this. So we went for the basic under seat bag and it was more than enough. I was quick shocked that I managed to fit everything in, especially considering I took a 700+ page book with me (priorities!)

Don’t pay for additional luggage space unless it’s 100% necessary. It will be easier to travel around and you’ll save money.

Get a bus from the airport

You can get a train from the airport close to the city centre, but this is a more costly option. But there are loads of other public transport options.

We had planned to get the local bus service which would have cost 2-3 Euro each way. But I couldn’t find where to pick it up from. So we ended up getting an Arriva airport service which was 8 Euro one way, or 11.50 return.

So while we could have saved a few more pounds it was a pretty good price for airport travel.

Save money on a weekend in Turin by walking everywhere

Turin is a really easy city to walk around, it’s quite flat and mostly laid out in grids so it’s easy to navigate. So there’s no real need to take a train, tram or bus unless you’re leaving the city centre.

The museum where the exhibition was housed was about a half an hour walk from our hotel and it was a lovely walk. The River Po flows through the city and it’s a lovely area to walk along, especially if the sun is shining.

Pick a hotel with breakfast included

We paid £102.31 each for our two night stay and we could have found somewhere cheaper but we wanted a good rating and a decent location. But this was definitely on the cheaper end of options.

To save money on food we picked accommodation that included a breakfast so that we could have a good morning meal to fill us up. Despite our hotel only offering a continental breakfast we were pretty full so didn’t need lunch on the Saturday, or a big meal on our

How do you save money when you go away?