I have the great good fortune of being invited to meet a friend in Europe for a weeks travel the week of June 20. He has the flexibility to meet me anywhere I say, but we are on a budget. I'll go anywhere. Any ideas? The websites let you put in flexible dates but not flexible destinations. Thanks.
You can do this pretty easily on Kayak.com. On the main page, put in Washingotn DC (all airports) and the dates---not flexible, but use actual dates like departing June 20 and returning June 27. Then in the "to" field, start putting in various possibilities. The little calendar on the right will show you lowest fare between those two cities on each day for the whole month of June.
It is easy to change to a different destination city on the same page, and it will show you new prices. Keep doing this for various destinations that look reasonable, and you'll get the picture.
Running Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, Milan, Amsterdam, and Rome, I didn't see anything under $1100. Paris was the lowest for most days, with Rome a close second on one or 2 of the days that week, but that may will change when you run it.
Maybe I do it an old fashioned way. I go onto expedia and just start plugging away with different cities to find where the cheapest destination is. I will try skyscanner now just to save some time.
Check Air Canada. I am finding a flight from DCA to London with return to Dulles for $1048.
I used http://matrix.itasoftware.com/cvg/dispatch which is a great search site.