Going to Europe
Getting away
I’m taking some time off, finally, in the end of September. Been busy the last couple of days thinking up stuff to do and see.
I’ll start with a week in Paris (never been), then going to Oktoberfest in Munich (long time dream come true! River of beer here I come!), then to my Brother’s in Vienna, then probably move to the warmer south of France and Spain, hopefully do a trek in the Picos de Europa National Park.
Anybody knows of good stuff happening in October in those areas? Also, what are the best places for trekking in Spain?
In the Future Everything Will Be on the Internet
Some tips on planning your travels on the net:
The abundance of budget airlines makes moving around inside Europe on a plane the best option for anything but the shortest trips. Wikitravel have a good list of all the different companies (there are many!). Ryanair, easyJet and AirBerlin have the largest networks. My personal favorite is AirBerlin. A flight will cost you the same or less as the train ticket for almost any destination. Few tips:
1. Besides checking out the biggest three, check also the local budget airlines for the country you’re flying to/from. They tend to have the best price. For example, the Spanish Clickair is usually the cheapest for flights to, from and inside Spain. AirBerlin is best for Germany and Austria.
2. Weekends (Saturday-Sunday) are much more expensive, fly mid-week.
3. Check out prices for the day just before and right after the date you wanted, sometimes there are dramatic differences.
A good place to see railway ticket prices and schedules is the Rail Europe site. The national railway sites themselves tend to suck and not show the actual ticket prices.
Airline ticket comparison sites always used to be slow and give shitty results. SideStep which I didn’t know about before, works absolutely great, searching the discount airlines as well and giving the best tickets really fast. It also works great for car rentals. Speaking of which, easyCar which I think is the same company as easyJet, are almost always the cheapest and they have really great deals.
easyJet? easyCar? What I really need is easyWoman and easyLife.
A good site to see bus schedules and prices in Spain is movelia.
On a side note, it’s really hard to find high quality information on stuff that doesn’t cost money, like places to visit, stuff to do, trekking routes etc.
What comes up in searches is either commercial tour operators, very limited information from travel guide publishers (like Lonely Planet) that just want you to buy the book, or information in the local language. Wikitravel, which I thought will really close this market once and for all is actually pretty pathetic and has very little information. I sense a niche here. Hmmm.