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gwaarrk posted:So what is the go to website for planning a trip to Europe hotel booking, flights over ect ect? I'm looking to head to Greece late spring/early summer next year for about a week. Looking to take in all the old poo poo over there. Primarily in the Athens area maybe a trip up to Delphi plus whatever might be suggested For hotels, it depends if you can stand websites that constantly go HEY BOOK WITHIN 5 MINUTES OR WE'RE SOLD OUT. If you can stand that, booking.com is a decent site. However, I do suggest to actually search the hotels on google, check reviews there, and check if they offer cheaper rooms on their own website. Sometimes not all room types are on booking.com. I mean, the manual way is, after deciding where you wanna go, just search for hotels / B&Bs in that area on google, check reviews, and book something through the website of the hotel directly. It works.
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Oct 29, 2017 22:16
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loving hotels.com has the worst pressure tactics, and It's only vaguely true what they say. "Last room!! [at this price]" means if you check a week later it's probably $1/night more expensive. But, they really often do have discounts and stuff compared to booking from the hotel directly, or free breakfast or whatever. I do use them a lot but gently caress it's such a stressful website. Even auction websites aren't that harassing. Also if you spend more than 2 nights in a single place, check Airbnb, as renting a full apartment is often around the same price as a small 2* hotel room. Not sure about Greece. Flights: flights.google.com is probably the only one worth using now, unless you want a tracker for exceptional sales, in which case secretflying is good. Also secretflying doesn't time pressure you, but approximately 0 flight sales last longer than 24 hours, and often shorter.
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Oct 30, 2017 07:50
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Literally never use Expedia. I've been hosed over with both flying (their fare said one bag was included in the price, it wasn't, I got to pay $120 for each my husbands' and my bag when we got to the airport) and hotels (I booked a king room, it actually booked me in a twin room) before. I like booking.com, they're my go-to.
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Oct 30, 2017 16:55
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If you're flexible with dates, Google Flights has a fantastic matrix you can use to find the cheapest combination of departure/return dates. We had pretty good luck with hotels.com travelling around Asia for six months last year. No real hiccups, and most places were as expected. The thing we liked most about it was that if you book 10 nights (can be over separate bookings), your 11th night is free up to the value of the average of the previous 10 nights. We found that quite useful, especially if you game it a little bit and play around with your average spend to get cheap nights in nicer hotels. That said, in Europe we've almost entirely used Airbnb for 9 months now. They usually aren't as nice as a hotel, but having a proper kitchen and more space to relax can be a huge plus, especially travelling full-time like we do.
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Oct 30, 2017 17:53
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HookShot posted:Literally never use Expedia. I've been hosed over with both flying (their fare said one bag was included in the price, it wasn't, I got to pay $120 for each my husbands' and my bag when we got to the airport) and hotels (I booked a king room, it actually booked me in a twin room) before. gently caress Expedia right in the rear end, forever. They hosed me over in exactly the ways you describe! I've used hotels.com a few times and it's always worked very well, so I can recommend that. For flights, I'll usually use google flights and then book directly with the airline. Make sure to book in incognito mode, if you search dates over and over again on an airline's website, there are rumours that they'll bump the price on you. I don't know if that's true, but I figure there's no reason to risk it.
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Oct 30, 2017 19:15
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Hipmunk has a nice flight matrix as well, use it to compare with the Google Flights one. Booking.com is my go-to as well. Now that I live in the US again, I hate the emails they auto-generate based on your past itineraries. Hey WaryWarren, plan a quick getaway to Vienna/Florence/Tallinn etc. today! *wanderlust intensifies*
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Nov 1, 2017 04:03
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Hotels.com is my preferred site. It's basically booking.com with slightly toned down "THERE'S ONLY ONE ROOM LEFT IN A 500 MILE RADIUS, BOOK NOW"-tactics.
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Nov 1, 2017 05:06
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Someone from YOUR COUNTRY just looked at this hotel, book now before they get in before you!!
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Nov 1, 2017 08:15
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PT6A posted:gently caress Expedia right in the rear end, forever. They hosed me over in exactly the ways you describe! Expedia and Hotels.com are the same company. Literally, same customer service line, same system, all under the same roof. Expedia + Hotels + Orbitz + Hotwire + Trivago + Travelocity + Cheaptickets + eBookers etc are all under the same umbrella. Since Expedia acquired Orbitz. It's really only Expedia vs Booking.com
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Nov 1, 2017 09:14
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I was a fan of kayak.com until one of the vendors they directed me to, kiwi.com, booked me separate flights rather than a single itinerary from San Diego to Zurich. There's fine print on kiwi that says they might book you on separate flights but no indication when you're booking that it's actually happening. It's not insane to think that Condor and Luftansa could arrange an itinerary together, so it never occurred to me until I check in in SD with an extra suitcase and she could only get me checked in until Frankfurt, where I had to pay for the bag again. So never use kiwi.com, as they're dicks and assholes and they'll badger you a hundred times to rate their customer service reps rather than the actual loving lovely policies that were the reason you called and the reps can't resolve.
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Nov 1, 2017 09:39
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Why would you name your flight booking website after a flightless bird 
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Nov 1, 2017 12:32
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Busy Bee posted:Expedia and Hotels.com are the same company. Literally, same customer service line, same system, all under the same roof. That's troubling. Oh well, all I know is that Expedia always screwed me over on room/bed type, and hotels.com never did, so even if it's the same company they seem to have different policies/practices. I think I'll switch to booking.com then.
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Nov 1, 2017 19:17
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Note as well that booking.com are owned by Priceline, which owns... *inhales* Booking.com Priceline.com Agoda Kayak Cheapflights Rentalcars momondo Mundi OpenTable So yeah basically the entire online travel booking industry is Priceline, Expedia and Airbnb.
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Nov 1, 2017 20:00
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Holy poo poo what I had no idea Guess I'll use Trivago to try and stop that monopoly a little teeny tiny bit
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Nov 1, 2017 21:03
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Busy Bee posted:Expedia + Hotels + Orbitz + Hotwire + Trivago + Travelocity + Cheaptickets + eBookers etc are all under the same umbrella.
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Nov 1, 2017 21:05
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Goddamnit I missed that one So... Okay.
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Nov 1, 2017 21:06
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What would be a good place to go to in Europe for one week in January?
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Nov 2, 2017 00:08
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I like Skyscanner for finding flights, it also provides overviews of prices for a whole month and that sort of thing, the stuff that people mentioned Google Flights can do (I've never used it). Not sure which megacorp monopolist that falls under.
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Nov 2, 2017 00:32
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orange sky posted:Holy poo poo what I had no idea You could always do what two of our three Italian hotels suggested last week, "just call us up and ask if we have availability and if we can give you a special price". LOL no your website is trash and you're condescending as hell in person, I'm not wasting my time to listen to you sigh and complain about the computer system before then checking 4 other random hotels in town.
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Nov 2, 2017 00:33
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Cheesemaster200 posted:What would be a good place to go to in Europe for one week in January? That's a pretty hard question to answer without some more info. What do you want to do/see/eat, ect. What's your budget? Want to stay in one place or maybe do two or three different places? For a week, for me, London or Paris. Both places have a ton to do and will keep you occupied for a week easy. While not exactly cheap, you can find deals in both places. Neither will be like Game of Thrones north of the wall winter, but be prepared for cool temps and possibly a little rain/rarely snow. You could do both if you wanted to. Flights in/out of Paris should be a bit cheaper, the UK charges like $100 in departure fees. If you book at least a month out, you can do the Eurostar train for ~$50-60 each way, its comfy and only about 2 hours. A flight may be a bit cheaper, but the hassesl of the airport, getting to/from the airports which are usually outside of town (alot of the discount airlines flying into London fly into Stanstead, Luton, and Southend, which can be a pain to get in/out of).
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Nov 2, 2017 00:42
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Cheesemaster200 posted:What would be a good place to go to in Europe for one week in January? No offence dude but this is kind of a ridiculous question. Where have you been? What’s your budget? What do you like to do? Food? Drinking? Outdoors? Museums? Galleries?
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Nov 2, 2017 12:34
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Cheesemaster200 posted:What would be a good place to go to in Europe for one week in January? Any major city or anywhere far south enough so that the weather won't blow, like Malta or Seville or Marrakech (if Morocco is Europe enough for you). I went to Malta last year in winter, and Marrakech the year before, and god drat it was nice to get somewhere with sun. If you're on a tight schedule to get back, maybe avoid London since their airports have a ~*~*~* crisis ~*~*~* roughly every second year whenever they think there's a 10% chance that maybe a snowflake will hit their airport. I don't know what's up with London, but about 3/4ths of the times I hear about a devastating winter transport crisis in Europe, it's in London due to a pitiful amount of snowfall that a single guy with a snowblower should be able to take care of in a couple hours. The other 1/4 of the time it's in Stockholm or wherever when they actually get a blizzard. https://www.google.ch/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=london+airport+shut+down+snow&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=VQf7WfOUOM7A8gf6_69A
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Nov 2, 2017 12:53
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webmeister posted:No offence dude but this is kind of a ridiculous question. He asked the same one a month ago and was at least a tiny bit more detailed in that post, but never followed up on it: Cheesemaster200 posted:Whats a good place to visit in Europe in January; skiing excepted? I think I may do a few days skiing in Switzerland or Austria, and then a couple days in a city in that area. Flights are real cheap from the mid-atlantic right now. I mean, it sounds like he's answered his own question. The answer is: somewhere near to the skiing. Vienna, Salzburg, Zürich, Lucerne, Turin....
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Nov 2, 2017 13:00
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Drone posted:He asked the same one a month ago and was at least a tiny bit more detailed in that post, but never followed up on it: Haha, I thought it sounded a bit familiar! I've actually been posting a bit in the travel subreddit, and super vague questions like "where should I go on holidays" get deleted on sight which is quite nice. Same for questions that can be easily answered by using google.
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Nov 2, 2017 13:26
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I'm flying into Amsterdam (because it was cheap) from Texas in late February, and have 4 nights to kill before meeting up with friends in Brussels. I'm struggling to determine how to divide my time between Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent. I'll probably spend at least one night in Amsterdam since i'm flying in there. I'm mostly interested in walking around and taking photos during the day, and trying lots of different beers.
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Nov 2, 2017 15:08
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4 nights in Amsterdam.
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Nov 2, 2017 15:32
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4 nights in Amsterdam, and spend the time you'd spend in Brussels in Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent instead.
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Nov 2, 2017 15:56
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Saladman posted:Any major city or anywhere far south enough so that the weather won't blow, like Malta or Seville or Marrakech (if Morocco is Europe enough for you). I went to Malta last year in winter, and Marrakech the year before, and god drat it was nice to get somewhere with sun. Backstory: I booked a $500 flight out of BWI into LHR and back Friday-Sunday. Checking the flights, I can do RT to most places in Europe for like $100-200 from there. I have been to practically everywhere in Europe except the Iberian Peninsula, Switzerland and Greece, but have never been there in winter. I ski, but Switzerland seems rather expensive for that and I keep reading the cities are rather boring. Greece is a possibility, but it is a long flight and the islands are apparently all shut down from a tourist infrastructure standpoint. I was looking to go to Seville and the surrounds or maybe Portugal Lisbon to Porto, but I can't seem to get a warm and fuzzy feeling around that. I really like central Europe, so was considering bouncing around Germany, Austria and Czech to some cities I haven't been to. quote:I'm flying into Amsterdam (because it was cheap) from Texas in late February, and have 4 nights to kill before meeting up with friends in Brussels. I'm struggling to determine how to divide my time between Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent. I'll probably spend at least one night in Amsterdam since i'm flying in there. Cheesemaster200 fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Nov 2, 2017 |
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Nov 2, 2017 23:42
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Cheesemaster200 posted:Backstory: I booked a $500 flight out of BWI into LHR and back Friday-Sunday. Checking the flights, I can do RT to most places in Europe for like $100-200 from there. I have been to practically everywhere in Europe except the Iberian Peninsula, Switzerland and Greece, but have never been there in winter. I ski, but Switzerland seems rather expensive for that and I keep reading the cities are rather boring. Greece is a possibility, but it is a long flight and the islands are apparently all shut down from a tourist infrastructure standpoint. I was looking to go to Seville and the surrounds or maybe Portugal Lisbon to Porto, but I can't seem to get a warm and fuzzy feeling around that. I really like central Europe, so was considering bouncing around Germany, Austria and Czech to some cities I haven't been to. The Iberian peninsula is awesome in January. If you want to go somewhere new, therell definitely be something there for everyone. After that it depends what you like to do, but Andalusia is great for sightseeing, Barcelona or Madrid for big city atmosphere, or (apparently, as P6TA will chip in) Logroño and Saint-Sébastien for food and smallish city atmosphere. (I've only been to Bilbao up there, and I thought it was a shithole, but I guess no one ever recommends Bilbao anyway.) There're a bunch of other cool towns in Spain too, like the crazy architecture of Segovia or the general vibe in Salamanca. Although maybe if that time in January is school semester break, Salamanca would be ultra dead since it's kind of a college town. I've never been to Portugal, but I've lived in Switzerland for years, it sucks in January. It's constantly grey, chilly, but typically not cold enough for there to be snow in the cities, and there really aren't any special events going on besides skiing and the hot air balloon festival near Montreau. If you're lucky after fresh snow and a sunny day it can be amazing, but I wouldn't plan a vacation for that. Saladman fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Nov 3, 2017 |
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Nov 3, 2017 09:21
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Cheesemaster200 posted:maybe Portugal Lisbon to Porto I can't speak from personal experience, but my boss took her family to Lisbon last February and loved it. The water's obviously still too cold to go in in February, but she was super impressed with the city itself and recommends it to just about anyone. I've added it to my list.
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Nov 3, 2017 11:33
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I didn’t mind Bilbao actually! The old town is nice, the Guggenheim is fantastic, and if you’re into engineering there’s an incredible gondola bridge about 20 minutes north (Vizcaya Bridge). Good food scene too, lots of nice pintxos bars to eat and drink at. Yeah, it’s probably a third tier Spanish city (assuming T1 is Barca/Madrid and T2 is places like Seville/Córdoba/San Seb), and not somewhere I’d recommend for a first time visitor, but it’s a decent spot for a couple of days. If you don’t mind the cold, Central Europe is worth a shout. Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Kraków etc. Probably the only one I wouldn’t recommend is Bratislava - it’s not bad, just much less interesting that the others.
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Nov 3, 2017 13:54
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Yeah, I guess "shithole" was too strong of a word, I should have said 'unremarkable'. I spent 5 days there a few years ago in winter for work (but had lots of time off). It was ok, and a lot nicer than like Genoa or Le Havre or [insert ugly modern European port city]. I think mainly I was disappointed by the Guggenheim. The architecture is interesting—although I would be hard-placed to tell it apart from his concert hall in LA if you showed me pictures, even though I've been to both—but the exhibition while I was there was super "ehhh", and I love installation art and enjoy a lot of contemporary art. Maybe I got unlucky.
Saladman fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Nov 3, 2017 |
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Nov 3, 2017 15:38
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I took everyone's advice and booked 4 days in Amsterdam. The more I read about the city the more excited I am to visit. I have 5 more nights to book. My original plan was to go to fly to Krakow and maybe Warsaw, or maybe spend 2 days in Prague (I was there for 10 days last year, but I have a friend that's heading over there after the fest, so it could be fun). Would Poland (Krakow/Warsaw) be a good way to end this portion of the trip? Or should I focus on hitting up all the other cities in Belgium or the Netherlands? Green cells are already booked. 
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Nov 3, 2017 16:25
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From Tilburg it's pretty easy to reach Belgium (transfer in Roosendaal, or take a bus). I'd suggest a few days in Antwerp and Ghent. Bruges is a day trip at most, and like 20 minutes from Ghent.
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Nov 3, 2017 17:02
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Saladman posted:Yeah, I guess "shithole" was too strong of a word, I should have said 'unremarkable'. I spent 5 days there a few years ago in winter for work (but had lots of time off). It was ok, and a lot nicer than like Genoa or Le Havre or [insert ugly modern European port city]. I think mainly I was disappointed by the Guggenheim. The architecture is interesting—although I would be hard-placed to tell it apart from his concert hall in LA if you showed me pictures, even though I've been to both—but the exhibition while I was there was super "ehhh", and I love installation art and enjoy a lot of contemporary art. Maybe I got unlucky. Fair enough - we did two nights so about 36 hours which felt reasonable. An afternoon around the waterfront and old town area, two nights in the pintxos bars and a full day at the Guggenheim just about covered it. Plus we were there in March I think so the weather was nice - 5 nights in winter would be a different proposition! arbybaconator posted:I took everyone's advice and booked 4 days in Amsterdam. The more I read about the city the more excited I am to visit. I haven't been to Warsaw but Krakow is great. Probably two days to explore the old town, the castle, Jewish Quarter, Oskar Schindler's factory etc. Another day for a trip out to Auschwitz, and another day to visit the royal salt mines if you're interested in that sort of thing (it's surprisingly interesting and you go several hundred metres underground into the mines). Warsaw isn't too far either - rome2rio reckons the train between them is about 2.5 hours and costs about 10 euros. Only other thing - I'd recommend staying one night in Bruges if you can. It's much nicer in the mornings and evenings when all the day-trippers have gone home to Brussels/wherever.
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Nov 3, 2017 17:51
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Bruges, Ghent and Louven are all lovely. I wish I went to university in a place like Ghent. I stayed in Krakow for 4 (?) nights. Wandered around the city for two days, and did day trips to Auschwitz and Zakopane (great-grandfather born there) as well. Warsaw's Old Town has been beautifully restored but outside of that, it felt a little lacking. Gdansk, Poznan and Wroclaw were much more interesting to me.
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Nov 3, 2017 18:16
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I found Wroclaw a little lacking, to be honest. Centennial Hall is cool, and the big square is interesting with a couple of nice cathedrals. And spotting the gnomes was fun. But I think after about 5 hours we sat in a cafe for a coffee and looked up a "24 hours in Wroclaw" type blog article, and realised that we'd basically covered everything already.
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Nov 3, 2017 18:31
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Saladman posted:The Iberian peninsula is awesome in January. If you want to go somewhere new, therell definitely be something there for everyone. After that it depends what you like to do, but Andalusia is great for sightseeing, Barcelona or Madrid for big city atmosphere, or (apparently, as P6TA will chip in) Logroño and Saint-Sébastien for food and smallish city atmosphere. (I've only been to Bilbao up there, and I thought it was a shithole, but I guess no one ever recommends Bilbao anyway.) There're a bunch of other cool towns in Spain too, like the crazy architecture of Segovia or the general vibe in Salamanca. Although maybe if that time in January is school semester break, Salamanca would be ultra dead since it's kind of a college town. I don't know I'd recommend Logrono in the winter. If the weather discourages you from just sort of wandering around, it probably gets a lot less fun. I'd say the bigger cities have a more even balance of stuff that's interesting and indoors, and wandering/tapas-bar-hopping. And vineyard tours would probably be pretty lacking as well. If you want the same kind of thing (a smaller city) with nicer weather in the winter, I'd recommend Jerez de la Frontera instead.
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Nov 3, 2017 18:50
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Trying to figure out some things for the end of our trip to Germany. We'll be in Salzburg, Austria until we check out on the 27th, and then we've got basically all of the 27th, all of the 28th, and some of the 29th until we need to get back to Munich in the afternoon of the 29th so we can stay over there and be ready for our flight that leaves the next morning.code:Any suggestions?
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Nov 4, 2017 02:29
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Go to Vienna if you haven't already been? It is quite beautiful at Christmas and you only really need a few days there before the boredom sets in, imo.
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Nov 5, 2017 07:43
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