Rhys Kelly woke up in Britain, ate pizza in front of the Duomo, cycled across Milan, browsed Prada and was back on a flight home the same night.
The entire thing cost him £115.
The 18-year-old, a university student in Nottingham, treated one of Italy’s biggest cities like a long lunch break.
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Eleven hours on the ground. One day. Pizza, pasta, ice cream and a smoothie, with shopping wedged in between.
He thinks every student should be doing it.
How the trip came together
Rhys found the flights on Skyscanner, leaving Heathrow early and returning the same evening.
The fare came to £20.
After landing at Malpensa, he and his friends took a train into the centre, then hired Dott e-bikes for a €5 day pass.
The bikes did most of the work.
“The highlight of the trip was definitely cycling around on Dott bikes as we got to see the majority of the city all within a small frame of time,” Rhys told CreatorZine.
“We had around 11 hours to explore as we had to travel back to the airport for our flight.”
The case for the day trip
Rhys reckons the timing is the trick, and that students are the people best placed to use it.
“This is the day trip you don’t want to miss out on,” he said. “If you’re in uni, you can do this during the week.
That’s when it’s going to be the cheapest because obviously you’ve got time to spare.”
His pitch is that Milan is small enough to clear in a single visit. “In one day, you can get everything done. Pizza, pasta, ice cream, see the Duomo.”
The food delivered. A €9 pizza came out as the standout, which he called “probably the best valued thing there”.
The group also stopped at Prada, Stüssy and Supreme before finishing the day, predictably, with ice cream.
Where the £115 went
Flights came to £20, travel insurance £7, the train around £13, the bike pass around £4.
Food and drink ran from a €2 Fanta to a €16 plate of pasta. The £115 total left out most of his shopping.
He spent £43 to £51 in Supreme alone, which is the part he says nobody actually has to copy.
“So realistically, if you wanted to go as cheaply as possible, you could get a day trip for £60.”
Why It Matters
The single-day European trip has become its own content format, and creators have worked out that the appeal is the arithmetic.
A breakdown of every euro spent travels further than a highlights reel, because the audience can picture themselves doing the same sum.
Rhys isn’t selling Milan. He’s selling the receipt.
That fits a wider shift in travel content, where the flex is no longer where you went but how little it cost to get there.
Budget itineraries, fare-hacking and “is this cheaper than a night out” framing now pull numbers that aspirational travel struggles to match.
Whether the £60 version holds up once flight prices climb is the open question.
For now, Rhys has the timestamps to prove it.
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