We are traveling from Fresno, CA to Prestbury England and to Aachen, Germany. We have one commitment date in Prestbury. We looked into a multiple destination airplane ticket from Fresno, to Manchester, to Brussels and then Brussels to Fresno. This seems more affordable than a roundtrip ticket and then going by train for the European travel. Does anyone have thoughts on this? Thanks for your help.
For travel with in Europe, the low-cost European airlines are often cheaper than the international airlines or trains. You can check the website skyscanner to see if there are low-cost flights between your destinations in Europe.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
For budget flights, try looking on www.skyscanner.com. I couldn't find any decently priced direct flights from Manchester to Brussels. However, you could try some neighboring cities like Liverpool or Cologne. I did find a flight for about $90 with one change from Manchester to Cologne. Then a train from Cologne to Aachen would only take about 1 hour direct and cost about 17 euros. Ideally if you left at 7:50am from Manchester you could be in Aachen by about 3pm.
Aachen-Maastricht airport serves both cities and has some scheduled flights. Flybe, for instance, flies there from Manchester, which would be quicker than going to Brussels. Lufthansa has one-stop service. If you want to do Brussels as well, you could take the train from Aachen and get your trans-Atlantic flight from there. Aachen is a pleasant small city, with its Charlemagne history, old and new industry, and a big population of students. It is near enough to Cologne for an easy side trip.