Sign up to The Getaway Expert, your simple guide to the perfect holiday

Kicking off the year as we intend to go on, we’re delighted to bring you The Getaway Expert, an exclusive guide from Metro’s Consultant Travel Editor to becoming a more confident traveller in 2026.

I’m Alice Murphy, a journalist with ten years’ experience all around the world. I was born in Ireland, but I’ve lived in Sydney, Melbourne, Chicago, beside a lake in Switzerland, and now here in London.

Assignments and twists of fate have brought me to incredible places, from the ancient Silk Road cities of Uzbekistan to the world’s most remote music festival in Australia’s Red Centre (where I was present when a reveller went into labour and delivered a healthy baby boy in the town’s only pub).

Panic at borders, nights on the floor of deserted bus terminals, 27 hours in Heathrow with no money to pay for a hotel — you name it, I’ve weathered the nightmare.

But that’s why we’re here – so you can learn from everything I’ve figured out the hard way in almost 60 countries. And with this guide, you’re going to do it in seven days.

We’ll take the headache out of planning by showing you the best eSIMS, the taxi apps that operate where Uber does not, and how to convert currency in real-time using the iPhone calculator app.

You’ll get insider tips – did you know you can get a free stopover in Istanbul or Reykjavik if you fly with certain airlines?

Or that several cities in Europe offer free public transport to anyone who stays there?

By the end of the week, you’ll also know which cities are the ones for you and where it’s worth splashing your hard-earned cash.

Sign up to The Getaway Expert for your seven-day guide packed with clever hacks, travel tales and money-saving advice.

There’ll be fun quizzes and expert analysis to help you discover what kind of traveller you are and which sort of adventure you should be signing up for next.

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