Europe String

A sinking dollar combined with the credit crunch and insane gas prices has many people re-evaluating their budgets and cutting out non-essentials. Unfortunately for many, the first to go is travel. What are you doing for holiday this year? Have you been and gone already? What budget adjustments did you make? Are you foregoing a break this year, staying closer to home or perhaps participating in the oh-so-trendy “stay-cation?” Your traveling brethren in Europe feel your pain as well. News reports across the continent are bemoaning the lack of holidays being taken. Both tourism industry folks and plain old Joes …read more

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Know you want to go somewhere and what you want to do, but not sure exactly where to go, and a destination that will fit your budget? A new website is hoping to inspire you.
TravelMuse is a family travel orientated website that offers many of the typical travel site goodies of destination guides, articles, theme travel tips, etc. but they also have a “Find Inspiration” feature that lets you input your vacation desires and it outputs a selection of trip ideas.
From the home page, it seemed much of what they do and recommend is US-based travel, so I wasn’t …read more

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With all the to-do about airlines charging for checked luggage (don’t get me started) let’s discuss how we can get all we need in a reasonable sized carry-on. I say reasonable sized, and I mean airline approved and able to fit under your seat. Not one of those entire bin taking up bags, please. I said not to get me started… Many European budget carriers have always charged for checked luggage and seeing as most of our trips are for long weekends, it’s pretty easy for us to bring only one bag. But we spent seven days in Italy …read more

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It’s time for another edition of fabulous moneysaving travel tips!
How do you get from the airport to your hotel? Not by a taxi, folks, please choose public transport. Most cities have decent bus, metro or train links from their airports to the city center. Information on how to do it can often by found on the city’s tourism bureau website, but if not simply search “airport city transport Prague” or some other such phrase. Not only will you save yourself a decent chunk of change, you’ll also be beginning your education on the city’s public transport system.
We’ve written about …read more

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Here’s a jumbled round-up of recent airline/airfare news:
Ryanair. We wrote about them in our Airfare Alerts 2 post. They’ve always been a bit persnickety but have now announced they won’t be honoring any tickets booked through third-party websites. That means if you’ve booked a flight on Ryanair through BravoFly, V-tours, Opodo, Atrapalo or OTBeach, you’d better contact them, or Ryan Air directly, to find out the status of your ticket. And apparently, Ryanair won’t be an option anymore or these, or other multiple booking sites.
Best Fares has a cool consolidator sale running. Offered deals are pretty good, especially if …read more

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Which websites do you have bookmarked for your budget travel planning? I obsessively check probably way too many…just in case. And I’m not very good at seeing a bargain price and snatching it – which is what has to be done as unfortunately, the truly cheap prices appear and disappear way too quickly. Here, I share some of my favorite go-to-first sites.
For airfares, if I’m totally flexible, I’ll visit SkyScanner to find out when the cheapest time to go. If I know when I want to go, I always check Kayak and then finding the cheapest price go to the …read more

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When you travel to a different country do you take the time to research local customs, like tipping suggestions, beforehand? Do you try to learn a couple phrases in the local language? Do look for and enjoy the opportunity to learn about a new city and culture, or complain that it’s not “like home?” A recent survey by the French travel website, Expedia.fr, found that the Ugly American may have been surpassed by the Foul French.
More than 4,000 hotel employees in six different countries were asked questions like which tourists, by nationality, were interested in trying local dishes, speaking the …read more

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Yea, that’s not a phrase you see so much nowadays. However WorldHotels is running a deal for those paying in US dollars. From now until the end of August, you can pay your hotel bill in USD at a 1-1 Euro exchange rate. That means if the hotel costs 150 EUR, you can pay 150 USD. That’s a savings of about 40% seeing as the current exchange rate of 1 USD equals .66 EUR. With the deal, you are paying 150 EUR for a roughly 225 USD room. Most of WorldHotels rooms are around 150 EUR a night.
Hotels participating …read more

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I know – it’s only August. But if you are thinking of a winter trip to Europe now is the time to get booking. Check last week’s post about airfare sales for some airline hints. Why should you consider Europe in the winter? Because less is more – lower prices, fewer people. Here are three good winter time destinations.
Athens: While most people dream of a Greek holiday on the beach – Athens is an excellent winter time choice as well. Temps will be in the 50’s Fahrenheit/around 10 Celsius and prices drop dramatically. Plus, there are a ton of …read more

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As a follow-up to the night train post, here’s another option for those looking to combine transport and hotel: ferries.
Obviously, this option is a bit more limited. I haven’t found a boat to whisk me from Prague to Barcelona. But if you are on the outskirts of the continent, this might be a handy, cost-effective and interesting way to move about. Let’s start south, near Italy and Greece. Many moons ago I took an overnight ferry between the two countries, and it was quite excruciating. Sixteen hours and I wanted to cry with boredom. Sleeping really didn’t occur. After …read more

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