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Our Latest Discovery: hidden europe
2007-08-16 21:56:00
We just discovered hidden europe, a treasure of a publication devoted to out-of-the-way corners of Europe , cultural (and geographical) enclaves, and thoughtful, leisurely examinations of destinations. Hidden europe commenced publication in early 2005 and comes out six times a year. Quite frankly, we’re blown away. We love the publication’s very mission, its attention to detail, and its complete insouciance regarding trends and buzz. Take a look at these sample article subjects: Prague’s African community, the Georgian Military Highway, obscure airports, Vojvodina, Brussels’ les Marolles/De Marollen ‘hood, “people’s palaces” of socialist Europe, and Franz Josef Land. Yowza, in other words.
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Midweek Notables: TUIfly, Ryanair, Montenegro
2007-08-15 18:20:00
What’s notable at midweek? 1. TUIfly may be in a financially shaky place, but they’re pulling out all the stops to get more people on board. They’ve just announced an “All you can fly” promotion, which runs €199. For your euros, you get unlimited travel between selected TUIfly destinations. These include 14 destinations in Germany, Paris, Valencia, Bilbao, Rome, Stockholm, Dubrovnik, and Basel—among 44 destinations in total. The catch? You’ve got to be between 16 and 26 years of age—with valid student identification—to take advantage. We scoured the fine print for evidence that non-EU students might not be eligible and came up with nothing, though the deal is only promoted on the German-language version of the TUIfly site. The “All” ticket can be booked through August 31, and is good for flights through October 31. 2. Is Ryanair back in expansion mode? The Irish low-cost carrier announced six new routes from Dublin today. In Oc...
More About: Notables , Mont

List: Dutch Treats
2007-08-10 22:40:00
It’s overcast and rainy where we are. So we’re thinking of the Netherlands. Sue us. Here’s a little list of current Dutch gems. 1. Ahead of the game, Dutch budget holiday boutique VakantieXperts has published their Winter Guide. Those in NL might want to stop by a shop and start dreaming of snow. 2. A frighteningly enormous Lego Man has appeared in Zandvoort. Thanks for freaking us out, Amherstdam. 3. Our guiltiest pleasure right now is Monique Smit’s “Wild,” a fluffy bit of Nederpop, currently at Number 18 in the Dutch Mega Top 50. 4. Leafe Sawntjin, a restaurant located in the fields of Friesland, looks like a great place to blow a weekly travel budget.
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Two for Thursday: TUIfly’s Sale; Ryanair in Spain
2007-08-09 19:50:00
1. TUI AG (the parent company of low-cost airline TUIfly) announced second-quarter earings today that seriously bummed investors out. Among other issues, TUIfly’s load factor is down a startling 12 percent, to 79.5%. But as if without a care in the world, TUIfly today released 555,000 €5 fares for travel through October 31. Taxes and surcharges will jack these fares up by between €18.16 and €52.80, and are on sale through midnight on Sunday (German time). 2. As we reported the other day, Ryanair announced two new bases today: Valencia (21 routes, up from 10) and Alicante (17 routes, up from six.) The new Valencia routes will kick off in October, with the new Alicante routes following in November and December. Our favorites among the new routes: Valencia-Santiago and Valencia-Malta.
More About: Spain , Sale , Thursday

EasyJet, We’ve Been Ignoring You
2007-08-08 20:06:00
Exciting: EasyJet recently announced that they’ll soon be flying to Romania. Today’s new route annoucement goes one better: From November 3, the UK low-cost carrier will be flying between London Gatwick and Sofia three times a week. With one-way journeys starting at £27.99 (€41.30; $57), the airline is directly challenging Wizz Air on the London-Sofia route. Currently, Wizz Air flies from London Luton to Sofia. The cheapest one-way fare we found for that route from mid-November on: £30.29, slightly more expensive than easyJet’s starting fare of £27.99. We had a bad experience with easyJet last summer when they cancelled a flight and gave us no workable option to obtain a refund. That acknowledged, easyJet’s routes into eastern Europe (especially at a time when Ryanair’s route expansion appears to have more or less stalled) are pushing us to reconsider the orange and white.
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July Air Stats: The Ryanair/SkyEurope Face-Off
2007-08-08 01:24:00
In July , Ryanair filled their planes impressively, managing a load factor of 90%. This number is identical to the Irish low-cost carrier’s July 2006 load factor numbers. Even more impressive is Ryanair’s 21% increase in passengers carried in July of this year against July 2006 numbers. Clearly, this summer’s fare war helped to fill planes in July. Earlier this year, SkyEurope had a clear advantage over Ryanair in these monthly face-offs. This advantage appears to have vaporized. While the Slovak low-cost carrier’s load factors are improving—July’s 87.6% load factor is up 3.4% over July 2006’s 84.2% load factor—they now lag behind Ryanair on this measure. And their percentage increase in passengers flown in July against July 2006 is also less impressive, at just 11.8%. Also of note, yesterday’s FT reports that Ryanair has entered the race to control the Spanish low-cost market with all guns blazing. Shortly, we can expect an announcement ...
More About: Face , Stats , Skye

Lucca: Open-air Altos
2007-08-03 17:33:00
Calling all Puccini lovers. It’s time to make a pilgrimage to Lucca to experience the 53rd annual Puccini Opera Festival, to experience opera as the master himself wanted to hear it. Started in 1930, following a 1924 letter from Puccini exclaiming his wish to hear his opera in the “open-”air,” the Puccini Opera Festival attracts 40,000 opera lovers a year to hear the music they lave in Lucca’s open-air theater just steps from where Puccini lived, worked and is buried. This year’s festival is going on now, through August 16, with shows of Puccini’s greats, from Tosca to La Boheme. Puccini and beautiful Lucca. It doesn’t get much better than that.
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Barcelona: Woody Allen troubles and city bikes!
2007-08-01 19:02:00
Visiting Barcelona ? Watch out for Woody : The BBC reported Monday that the city of Barcelona is coughing up € 1,000,000 to Woody Allen , covering 10% of the budget of his upcoming film, which is set in the city and currently filming around town. In addition, the regional Catalonian government is chipping in another € 500,000. Residents are annoyed with the amount of public funds going to the project (75% polled found the contribution “excessive”). Locals and tourists are annoyed by some shut-downs around town: the Ramblas was recently closed for filming. And Barcelona filmmakers are annoyed that the government isn’t willing to donate the same amount to cash to local directors. But there’s an upside: Who wouldn’t want to sneak a peak at the lovely Scarlett Johansson, and Spanish stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. And the film is likely to be good for the city’s tourism industry, as Allen promises the movie to be a “love letter to Barce...
More About: Bikes , City

Rome: City will party all night on Sept 8th
2007-07-31 20:56:00
We’re big fans of the city-wide all-night party trend in Europe. Paris seems to have come to the party first in October 2002 with its “Nuit Blanche” of performances, gallery openings, monument tours, and late-night shenanigans. Rome followed the next year, launching “Notte Bianca” with great success. Indeed, according to party planners, the party has become an event the Italian capital “can no longer do without!” Rome has just announced that ”Notte Bianca 2007″ will take place the night of Saturday, Sept ember 8th (with some events happening the day before). This year’s show will promote a message of cultural difference and understanding, and will feature hundreds of acts performed by artists all night long throughout the city. Which kind of events? According to the event’s website: For Saturday September 8th the programme includes performances, concerts, plays, dance shows, magic and circus arts, contemporar...
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Paris: New bike program pedals past US tourists
2007-07-27 19:34:00
There’s been a lot of buzz about Paris ’ new city-wide bike push that put over 10,000 bikes on the street for rent (read our earlier post). According to the plan, anyone with a credit card can join the program, which lends bikes for 30-minute treks for almost nothing (membership in the program costs as low as $44 a year). Budget Travel’s blog on Wednesday pointed out a serious problem for Americans ready to hop on a bike: The rental kiosks, it turns out, only take European micro-chipped enhanced credit cards. Those @#!$@ EC cards! As US tourists in France usually find out early in their trip, American credit cards are not equipped with the little microchip that makes EC cards tick.  This sometimes, but not always, causes trouble when swiping at a restaurant, in a store, or even (our personal favorite) in a Metro station. Now it’s at it again, jamming the bike rental process. ARGH! We are hopeful that Mayor Delanoë will remedy this ”chip” ...
More About: Bike , Tourists , Past , Program

easyJet bares all (taxes and charges, that is)
2007-07-26 18:27:00
Three cheers for easyJet’s announcement yesterday that they’ve updated their website to show ticket prices inclusive of all taxes and surcharges from the first page of search results. This has long been a frustration on both airline websites and airfare price comparison sites, where taxes and surcharges aren’t tacked on until subsequent pages. What’s the competition doing? A quick check on some of our favorite low-cost carriers reveals: easyJet displays taxes and surcharges on the first search results page, as promised in their press release.  In our test, a London Gatwick to Pisa (Aug 27) flight was immediately offered at 44.99 GBP. Ryanair doesn’t show taxes and charges on the results page, waiting to reveal the extra fees until after you’ve selected a flight. In our case, we found a flight from London Stansted to Pisa (same date as above) for “19.99 GBP.” However, on the next page it was revealed to actually cost 45.19 GBP, s...
More About: Taxes , Char , Ares

Amsterdam: Underground Instability
2007-07-24 19:39:00
It’s possible to get almost anywhere in Amsterdam by foot, tram, bus, and, of course, the trusty Dutch bicycle. Since 2003, the city, recognizing a need for speedier transit, has been digging for a subway. In a city lined with canals and soggy earth, a dig of this sort presents some unique challenges.   Yesterday’s Boston Globe had an interesting look at the logistics. Let’s just say that Amsterdam is a “city in motion”… Most of Amsterdam is supported by a system of underground wooden poles and pilings, and the land itself tends to shift and sink a couple millimeters a year. And if digging wasn’t a big enough problem, large, rumbling trains could affect this delicate balancing act once the subway’s up and running. Best of luck with your dig, Amsterdam. We’ll be checking in with you soon.
More About: Underground , Round , Under , Stability

Paris: What did 69 million tourists do in 2006?
2007-07-23 17:13:00
Last week, Paris ’ office of tourism announced that 69 million tourists visited the city’s attractions in 2006. Yowsa. And what were the most popular sights? First place: Notre Dame — 13.5 million visitors graced the cathedral, up from 13 million in 2005. Second place: Basilica de Sacre Coeur in Montmartre — 10 million visits, up from 8 million in 2005. Third place: The Louvre — 8.3 million visits, up 10.3 % from 2005. Honorable mention: Musee d’Orsey, the 20-year old museum of 19th and 20th Century art, placed seventh with 3 million visits, its highest number ever. But who are these visitors? The New York Times reports today that the country is aware of the foreign-born demographic packing its museums (occasionally turning the Louvre into a “crowded railroad station”). President Sarkozy’s government is considering ways to bring the French back into their own cultural institutions, including free admission for les francai...
More About: Tourists , Million , Tourist , On Tour

EuroWeepo: Dollar at record lows against the Euro
2007-07-19 18:14:00
The US dollar fell to record lows against the euro on Wednesday, hitting $1.3834, its lowest value since the introduction of the euro in 1999. Today it’s still down there — $1.3819 to the euro in mid-morning trading. Why? Industry analysts blame it on a lousy US housing market. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s speech yesterday, in which he cut back on 2007 projections for the US economy, didn’t help either. How does this affect US tourists in Euro pe? The New York Time’s ran a reality check yesterday that was kind of funny and kind of scary. After all, you can laugh off a $5 cups of coffee in London. But $500 for a hotel room? Come on, folks! You can easily find something more affordable.
More About: Dollar , Record , Doll , Cord

Ryanair’s Carbon Lie-oxide
2007-07-18 23:28:00
For the second time this year, Ryanair has been reprimanded for publishing misleading advertisements about its environmental record. The BBC reports that the Advertising Standards Agency in Great Britain has determined that the low-cost carrier was “likely to mislead” in recent ads claiming that the airline industry “accounts for just 2% of carbon dioxide emissions.” Ryanair apparently forgot to mention that the figure represented global rather than country-specific emissions. According to the UK government, the aviation industry in the UK accounts for about 5.5 % of the country’s CO2 emissions each year. Ryanair has been ordered not to repeat the ad. Better luck next time!
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Paris: 10,600 bikes take to the streets
2007-07-17 23:48:00
Paris’ cool (and green) mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, just got even cooler (and greener) when he launched Vélib’, a massive public biking initiative on Sunday. Under the plan, bikers may borrow a bike from one of 750 pick-up spots around town and drop it off at any other center within 30 minutes. (If you need more time to get there, you’re charged by the half hour thereafter.) Joining the program is super cheap: €1 a day, € 5 a week, or €29 a year. The intention is to get more people biking, and do something about congestion in the city center. Bravo! We liked Katrin Bennhold’s piece in the International Herald Tribune. (It also appeared with a couple of edits in yesterday’s NY Times.)
More About: Paris , Bikes , Streets , The Streets

Blog note: Our wandering Cheapo…
2007-07-17 18:04:00
A note to EuroCheapo Blog readers: EuroCheapo’s Blogger-in-Chief, Alex Robertson Textor, is taking his long-anticipated trek through southern and Eastern Europe right now. Included in his whirlwind tour: Athens, Thessaloniki, Skopje (Macedonia), Belgrade, Ljubljana, Vienna, Barcelona, and Madrid. We miss you back in steamy NYC, Alex! Of course, we’ll share any dispatches that reach the office. Have fun! The EuroCheapo blog will continue to post travel news and deals in Alex’s absence.
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SkyEurope’s Summer Sale
2007-07-12 23:25:00
They might not be giving away free flights à la Ryanair, but Slovak low-cost carrier SkyEurope is at least trying to keep up in the cheap fares department. Through July 29, SkyEurope is offering €39 all-inclusive one-way fares. No word on which routes are included in the sale. We performed our industry-feared fare check and came up with fares close to the €39 all-inclusive base, but none right on point. In any case, promotional fares are good for travel between July 19 and October 27.
More About: Summer , Sale , Skye , Rope

Ryanair: 150 Million UK Passengers
2007-07-12 00:31:00
Ryanair announced today that their tally of passengers flown in or out of the UK has hit 150,000,000. It took the airline over 20 years to reach this milestone, and to celebrate it, they’re giving away a quarter million fares for “zilch, nada, zip, f**k all.” To which we say: terrifying and impressive, Ryanair. We’re in awe of the airline’s continued bravado, which befits an upstart boxer more than an entrenched and very successful airline. We wonder what sorts of attack dog qualities prospective pr hires have to demonstrate before being brought on board. The free fares can be purchased through tomorrow evening (Thursday, July 12). Note: we did a spot check on one route and found no free fares over the next six weeks, which suggests to us that these fares are being snapped up quickly.
More About: Ryanair , Million , Ryan , Passengers

Norwegian Air Shuttle Flies to the North Pole…
2007-07-10 00:21:00
…sort of. In late March, 2008, the Norwegian low-cost carrier will begin flying between Oslo and Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s main settlement. Svalbard, an archipelago roughly half-way between Norway and the North Pole , has emerged as a big, and very expensive, eco-destination over the last few decades. The cheapest Norwegian Air Shuttle round-trip we found was just NOK1542 (€195; $265), including taxes.
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Friday List: Ch-Ch-Ch-Check It Out
2007-07-07 00:21:00
Apologies to Lil’ Chris for the steal. We’re sleepy. It’s the end of a long week, after all. On our radar screens… 1. Following leads in the German media (like this one we came across in the Rheinische Post) Airscoop tells us that Ryanair might just be interested in buying some Air Berlin shares—just under 11% of the German LCC’s shares, as matter of fact. 2. The Saxony Tourist Board tells us that one-fourth of the domestic “culture” tourism market ends up in the federal state home to Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz. 3. We spied some very good weekly vacation home rates on Dutch travel bargain chain D-Reizen’s site. Look under “vakantiewoningen” (in Dutch). Over & out, Cheapos.
More About: List , Check , Friday , Frida

June: SkyEurope and Ryanair Battle On
2007-07-05 23:16:00
It’s the start of the month, which can mean only one thing: passenger totals and load factor comparison time! Yeehaw! In June 2007, Ryan air ’s load factor decreased by 2 percent (from 87% to 85%), while the number of passengers carried by the Irish low-cost carrier increased by 18%, both figures in comparison with June 2006 stats. By way of contrast, Slovak budget airline SkyEurope witnessed a 3.1 percent increase in load factor (from 77.7% to 80.1%) though managed a smaller increase in the number of passengers carried (at 16.4%) than did Ryanair. Load factor, for those unfamiliar with the increasingly bandied about term, refers to the aggregate number of seats purchased—though not necessarily the number of seats occupied. Will promotional fares nudge any of these numbers up in July? Stay tuned.
More About: Battle , Skye

JAT Ticket Adventure
2007-07-03 23:17:00
We purchased a Belgrade-Ljubljana one-way JAT ticket on Sunday night, for travel in late July. We were, as the Brits say, chuffed. The ticket came to just RSD5,942 (€74; $99). The JAT search engine worked fine, and we were approaching that magic, banal moment that drives all online air travel purchases: the invitation to print an e-ticket. But the moment didn’t arrive. Instead of seeing a screen confirming our purchase, we were greeted by a screen informing us that we’d merely reserved our ticket, and that we had just four days to drop by a JAT office to purchase it. Happily for us, there’s a JAT office here in New York. Yesterday morning we made our way to the JAT office on Madison Avenue to pick up our ticket. After a brief chat with two very friendly ladies, we were told that we’d need pay with cash or a money order. We ran down to an ATM to obtain cash to buy the ticket, and there it was: our handwritten, old school JAT ticket, for under $100. Its brigh...
More About: Adventure , Ticket , Vent , Advent , Tick

Neville Walker on Vienna
2007-07-02 22:04:00
Neville Walk er’s ode to Vienna in this past weekend’s Financial Times is gorgeous and plaintive. Writing about Vienna in the newspaper’s “What I Love About…” series, Walker compellingly nails Vienna’s eccentric character. Walker writes that Vienna was “once a cul-de-sac on the edge of the Eastern Bloc” now “learning to be hip and modern.” Yet what makes the city so interesting is not its uneven emergence into contemporary European cool but rather its vestigal otherworldliness. Walker knows this; by singling out the Kettenbrückengasse flea market and Peter’s Operncafé Hartauer as emblems of today’s Vienna, he gets at a city that is not so much resting on its laurels as much as it is holding the uncanny tight, as if it were a lifevest. Or, in Walker’s words: “Vienna is like an estranged relative grown eccentric by living alone, but suddenly seized with enthusiasm for a newly-expanded social ci...
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Thursday List: Jersey, SkyEurope, Maps, Garden Plots
2007-06-28 19:03:00
Photo by Something in between It’s Thursday . Read up. 1. Tourism is on the rise in Jersey . Bookings on the Channel Island in May, 2007 were up 25 percent over May, 2006 bookings. Clearly Jersey Tourism’s UK television campaign is paying off. 2. SkyEurope is hawking a bunch of €39 all inclusive one-way fares. The fare sale period stretches from July 2 through October 28. Promo fares can be booked until midnight (Central European timezone) on July 8. The 3. We’re very curious about BelleAir, the airline that flies to and from Tirana from 14 airports in Italy. We also wonder why their route map appears to refigure Europe politically, ignoring last year’s Serbia-Montenegro split and, more bizarrely, turning Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria into one massive new country. 4. When the weather heats up, as it is currently doing, our minds turn to those tiny garden-and-hut plots so often sighted from train windows zipping from city to city throughout German-speaking E...
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The Week of Failed Bids
2007-06-28 17:48:00
On Wednesday, Aeroflot abandoned their effort to purchase a significant stake in Alitalia. Also on Wednesday, Ryanair’s bid for Aer Lingus was blocked by the European Commission. Ryanair has already confirmed that they will contest the European Commission’s decision. Is it time for Ryanair and Aeroflot to reconsider bravado as a strategy? Perhaps, but we doubt the two carriers will take this caution to heart.
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Four for Wednesday
2007-06-27 16:55:00
Photo by Danner Gyde This and that. 1. Today’s Kazakhstan special report in the FT. Summary: oil, Nazarbayev, grand architecture, and, um, oil. 2. Ryanair extends its “lowest price guarantee” through September 30. The guarantee has 11 stipulations. Best of luck. 3. We like Guardian Unlimited’s Czech “beer experiences” top-ten list. At long last, lads and frat boys have been given a legitimate excuse to take a beer bath. 4. Starting August 16, Norwegian Air Shuttle will be flying between Oslo and Moscow three times a week. The cheapest roundtrip fares we’re seeing is NOK2485 (€312; $419). Norwegian’s Oslo-Moscow route ends on October 25.
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Tuesday List
2007-06-26 22:10:00
Here. There. And Elsewhere. 1. Europe A La Carte Blog warns of delays at UK airports. Partially to blame: Spain’s new security rules for air passengers, which seem to us to flirt with violating the spirit of Schengen. 2. Italian somewhat low-cost carrier Volare is hawking a €10 discount on all July flights, if booked by July 2. Worth checking out. 3. UK travel gourmand site Black Tomato tell us about Yotel.com, a new airport-based pod-like accommodation featuring tiny cabin-like rooms with en suite showers. A Yotel is about to open at Gatwick’s South Terminal, where rates will begin at £25 for a four-hour stay in a “standard” cabin. The earliest date taken by the Yotel booking engine is July 1.
More About: List , Tuesday

Monarch’s Confidence
2007-06-25 22:06:00
UK low-cost carrier Mona rch is bursting with confidence these days, trumpeting their dominance of the Manchester-Barcelona route to anyone who will listen—a group of people, we suppose, that includes us. After Monarch inaugurated a Manchester-Barcelona service in late 2003, BMIBaby and Iberia—two other players on the route—ceased flying the route. Now Jet2, which began flying between Barcelona and Manchester in March of this year, is also withdrawing its service. While we’ve found Monarch’s “Bargain Hunter” search tool to be more buzzy than useful, the airline deserves props for its free newspapers and hot towel service. Neither amenity tends to show up on the LCC menu all that often.
More About: Confidence , Narc

List: Wizz, Airplane Phones, Pink Night
2007-06-21 22:52:00
New, nasty, and noteworthy. 1. Polish wonder LCC WizzAir announced this week that they’ll open their 7th base in Poznan in January 2008 by launching new routes connecting the western Polish city to Doncaster, Glasgow Prestwick, Malmö, and Oslo. Hot on the heels of that press release, the Wizzers announced today that they’ll inaugurate a Dortmund-Sofia route on October 29. 2. It looks as though cellphone conversations will soon flavor the air in planes zipping across the European Union. We can’t friggin wait. 3. June 30 sees La Notte Rosa celebration sweeping through various towns along Italy’s Adriatic coast, from Lido di Volano north of Comacchio in the north to Cattolica in the south. “Pink Night ” also extends inland to the Republic of San Marino. La Notte Rosa literally turns everything pink. Pink balloons, pink candy, pink cakes, pink flowers, pink flags will all crop up. These towns will be awash in pink. There will also be a massive range o...
More About: Phones , List , Airplane