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For COVID planes aren't that huge of a vector if you take precautions, from the news I've seen. A club or a bar are much more dangerous.
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Jul 12, 2020 12:09
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Cicero posted:Think I decided where to go for beach vacation next month with the family: Naxos. Biggest of the Cyclades, and apparently the only one that's not dry and barren. Most of the western coast is an awesome beach, there are several places that offer wind/kite surfing (including for kids) along said coast, and there are also good options for snorkeling/scuba, mountain biking, and hiking on the island. IMO spend at least 2, better yet 3, days on Santorini if you're planning to spend 7-9 days in the area and have to go through Santorini anyway. Santorini is one of the most scenic places I've ever been, and it's completely different from any of the other Greek islands in terms of scenery/geology. Now is also a uniquely great time in general as there are no cruise ships, so Thera and Oia won't be absolutely overrun. The beaches on Santorini are pretty small and are also pretty "eh" so I think you're on the right track for you general idea. I've been to Naxos and I didn't find it particularly memorable but I was there in late Oct or early Nov, so it wasn't really a beach time of year. It's probably perfect for what you want to do. If you do spend 2-3 days on Santorini, rent a car.
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Jul 12, 2020 12:19
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I think I'm up for spending like a day, day and a half in Santorini. But beautiful views/scenery isn't a prime motivator for me, it's just a nice-to-have while I'm doing other things, and the kids care even less.
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Jul 13, 2020 19:03
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Cicero posted:I think I'm up for spending like a day, day and a half in Santorini. But beautiful views/scenery isn't a prime motivator for me, it's just a nice-to-have while I'm doing other things, and the kids care even less. Day and a half is fine, I was just making sure you weren't immediately going from the airport to the ferry. Oia and Thera/Fira are both pretty neat. The scenery there is stunning, and I really doubt you would not be impressed by it. Or even any kid older than like 8 for that matter, as it looks like something made up for a fantasy/scifi movie. Coming in by ferry from Naxos is a neat cool way to get in (or out), because you end up at the bottom of a massive 300m and almost completely vertical cliff, like the Princess Bride's "Cliffs of Insanity". From the airport it's a gentle gradient and probably harder to appreciate until you actually get to the rim.
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Jul 14, 2020 21:45
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This article is depressing as gently caress.  https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/us-cities-that-are-full-of-european-charm/amp
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Jul 16, 2020 15:08
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In France, E Leclerc car rental is an incredible deal, it's like 5 eur a day plus some tiny amount per km. You don't get some shiny truck (in fact you'll probably get a beat up punto), but it's unbeatable on price, and the staff are chill. for covid reasons i've been stuck here for months and have saved so much money vs a traditional rental
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Jul 16, 2020 15:15
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WaryWarren posted:This article is depressing as gently caress. I went to Carmel a couple of weeks ago and can verify it is awesome
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Jul 16, 2020 17:07
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WaryWarren posted:This article is depressing as gently caress. Speaking as a European worried about US tourists wandering around spreading covid, I welcome anything which encourages people to stay the hell away. We've got business people already reporting turning US tourists away after they admitted not adhering to the 2 week quarantine they are supposed to be observing. Everyone wants things to get back to normal, but these people are just making that process take longer 
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Jul 16, 2020 17:53
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lol Carmel is really nice, I love Carmel but it's Carmel, it's not the loving Cinque Terra ffs. Everything in that article is just sad as hell, they may as well just recommend Epcot Center. I mean Newport, RI for Nice, I'm dying.
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Jul 16, 2020 18:18
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greazeball posted:lol Carmel is really nice, I love Carmel but it's Carmel, it's not the loving Cinque Terra ffs. Everything in that article is just sad as hell, they may as well just recommend Epcot Center. I mean Newport, RI for Nice, I'm dying. I've kind of wanted to go to New Glarus for a while now, not going to lie. I was in Chicago a couple years ago for a wedding and if I'd had a rental car for the trip I miiiiight have done it as a day or overnight trip. But yeah I assume it would be like if Epcot had a "Switzerland land" that was a slightly bigger than their normal cultural villages and that I would wonder wtf I spent 5 hours driving to get there. Edit: I just remembered Google Maps street view exists. Sweet Jesus, it's like 5 mock-chalet-looking structures with an otherwise totally stereotypical "slowly depopulating American countryside 1950s farm town" vibe. Also, not a lot of mountains in western Wisconsin. Saladman fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 16, 2020 21:34
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WaryWarren posted:This article is depressing as gently caress. lmao
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Jul 17, 2020 00:41
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greazeball posted:lol Carmel is really nice, I love Carmel but it's Carmel, it's not the loving Cinque Terra ffs. Everything in that article is just sad as hell, they may as well just recommend Epcot Center. I mean Newport, RI for Nice, I'm dying. Newport is a nice place, but I'm struggling to think of a single thing it has in common with Nice aside from "on water" lol
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Jul 17, 2020 23:51
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Grape posted:Newport is a Nice place, but I'm struggling to think of a single thing it has in common with Nice aside from "on water" lol You just said it yourself... 
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Jul 18, 2020 06:27
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Saladman posted:I've kind of wanted to go to New Glarus for a while now, not going to lie. I was in Chicago a couple years ago for a wedding and if I'd had a rental car for the trip I miiiiight have done it as a day or overnight trip. The brewery is nice, and the motorcycle riding roads north and further west of there are extremely fantastic. The Driftless area is some of the best possible riding in the Midwest. The town of New Glarus itself though is not great if you're under 60.
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Jul 18, 2020 15:19
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Ally McBeal Wiki posted:The brewery is nice, and the motorcycle riding roads north and further west of there are extremely fantastic. The Driftless area is some of the best possible riding in the Midwest. The town of New Glarus itself though is not great if you're under 60. Seems fairly accurate then
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Jul 18, 2020 16:16
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Ally McBeal Wiki posted:The brewery is nice, and the motorcycle riding roads north and further west of there are extremely fantastic. The Driftless area is some of the best possible riding in the Midwest. The town of New Glarus itself though is not great if you're under 60. Yup, pretty much. Great road biking in the area though!
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Jul 20, 2020 20:09
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If corona allows it, I might decide to go do some mountain hiking in Austria in September/October. I'm not going to book anything yet, I'm pretty sure I can book something on short notice if I need to and I can just drive to Austria so it should be fine. Just as a couple checks: - The weather should still be fine in those months right? - Which areas of Austria would you recommend for hiking?
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Jul 20, 2020 20:57
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Carbon dioxide posted:If corona allows it, I might decide to go do some mountain hiking in Austria in September/October. I'm not going to book anything yet, I'm pretty sure I can book something on short notice if I need to and I can just drive to Austria so it should be fine. September yes. October usually yes, especially in the first half. Snow is rare even high up until end of October although it can and does snow any time one year above like 1800m, but usually it is ephemeral until late October even at like 3000m. The other issue would be if you really want to do long hikes, then the daylight starts to become noticeably less by mid-September, so if you want to do a 10 hour hike you'd have to really get up and go in the morning. My wife absolutely does not get up in the morning on weekends, so we always end up spending like the last half hour of our September hikes walking in the complete darkness. But by that point you're usually close enough back to the valley so it's not a big deal. Can't help for Austria specifically, I've been pretty much every valley in Switzerland but only have done a handful of hikes in Austria in the upper Inn and closer to the border. Generally I would recommend hikes that include a lake, whether they're a dam or natural one. The upper Inn valley in general is pretty amazing, as there are lots of little castles all over the place like in Nauders, Tarasp, and there's that sunken town in Reschensee that is all over Instagram and a bit overrated IMO but is also kind of distinctive. Also that would give you something to do if you end up going down there and the weather has a day or three that are not conducive to hiking, e.g. Tarasp castle is a fun ~2 hour visit as it's exceptionally well-furnished and decorated, and not barren stonework like most municipal-owned castles.
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Jul 21, 2020 09:12
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Thanks for the tips. I see those places you mentioned are around the Swiss/Italian border, and normally I'd love that. But my plan this year is to drive straight to Austria, stay there, and drive straight back because the more countries I spend in the larger chance I have of getting into extra border checks or other country-specific Corona stuff if there's another local outbreak.
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Jul 25, 2020 06:57
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Carbon dioxide posted:Thanks for the tips. I see those places you mentioned are around the Swiss/Italian border, and normally I'd love that. Ugh, yeah probably a good call. I was there in March, right at the Swiss-Austria-Italy border, just before the lockdown in Italy and it was stressful thinking that maybe I'd be on lockdown after waking up in the morning because I was 2 km away from the border, but if I had been 2 km in a different way I would for some reason have been "safe". You'd think after all this time Europe would have figured out how to do lockdowns/travel restrictions based on geographical region rather than some slavish devotion to national borders, as if an outbreak in Calabria has the slightest bearing about what's going on in Sardinia (see: current restrictions on Spain, Portugal). I think my favourite right now is that Luxembourg is categorised as like the world's worst COVID country, because it's like the only country in the world that you can actually get tested easily, and without paying €200. Luxembourg's case fatality rate is like 1/10th of Belgium's, but Belgians are fine to travel and Luxembourgers aren't, because Belgium doesn't test worth a drat and Europe considers "lack of testing" the same as "no positive cases". It's so loving dumb, it's like Trump came up with it. Yes, Europe, there's some magical reason that Luxembourg City is bad but people from Trier, Arlon, and Metz are totally good to go. E: I'm curious if that's actually true ^^^ Looks like the USA has had about 21 daily cases per 100k (70k cases, 330m residents) in the past week, whereas Luxembourg has had around 110 cases/day for 600k residents, so ~18 cases per 100k. Belgium at around 350 cases per 11m is ~3 cases per 100k. Hmm.... It looks like Belgium has the world's worst number of deaths per capita, and by a large margin (0.1%, roughly double that of the USA and Brazil although they're both doing their hardest to catch up.) Saladman fucked around with this message at 13:07 on Jul 27, 2020 |
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Jul 27, 2020 12:56
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Saladman posted:
I was really hopeful about this at the start based on some lip service from certain politicians, and some countries have done it internally, but they've mostly fallen back on tired tropes about borders. I don't think that any country had travel restrictions along an internal border that were stricter than their internal ones?
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Jul 27, 2020 14:58
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Saladman posted:Looks like the USA has had about 21 daily cases per 100k (70k cases, 330m residents) in the past week, whereas Luxembourg has had around 110 cases/day for 600k residents, so ~18 cases per 100k. Belgium at around 350 cases per 11m is ~3 cases per 100k. Hmm.... Honestly, this is only a useful comparison if the rates of testing are also roughly the same, and I don't know if that data gets published? Here in Oz they always annouce testing numbers at the same time as new infections and fatalities, simply because a 50% drop in new infections on a particular day isn't useful information if there's also a 50% drop in testing that day. And FWIW, testing is completely free here. The only "cost" is if you get paid on an hourly basis (or have no sick leave), since you can't go back to work until you get a negative result.
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Jul 28, 2020 00:07
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Saladman posted:Ugh, yeah probably a good call. I was there in March, right at the Swiss-Austria-Italy border, just before the lockdown in Italy and it was stressful thinking that maybe I'd be on lockdown after waking up in the morning because I was 2 km away from the border, but if I had been 2 km in a different way I would for some reason have been "safe". You really don't understand these numbers, do you?
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Jul 28, 2020 06:36
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Saladman posted:
Belgium is one of the only countries which also counts probable covid deaths (and performs covid tests on dead people), if we'd count the same way as other countries our nr of covid deaths would be half of what we report now.
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Jul 28, 2020 09:02
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Northern Norway, good idea in mid-August? Wizzair has a new flight to Tromso and although the departure airport is a bit out of the way, why the hell not since I'm not getting a real GTFO vacation this year probably. Thinking of spending a day or two there and then setting out to Nordkapp. E: probably a week max, due to scheduling conflicts E2: Unless I can't get my vacation approved or something changes, I'm fuckin going. Convinced a friend to go along so splitting car/gas and hotels wouldn't be too bad at all. E3: fuuck Norway just announced they're considering mandatory quarantine for me and will decide on Friday while the best flight is on Monday lol E4: Yep 10 day quarantine on arrival. I can still cancel the car reservation but not the gimbal I ordered for my camera mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Aug 6, 2020 |
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Aug 3, 2020 13:21
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Our Airbnb in Naxos was the top half of a duplex, the bottom half was a nice old couple who lives there with a dog. The dog running around was like the best part of the trip for the kids (my son and his friend), he was very friendly and would follow us to the beach (only like ~100m away). Are there any good ways to search for hotels and the like that have on-site pets? Because that would be dope. I tried googling, but I just get results for pet-friendly hotels, which isn't what I'm looking for.
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Sep 2, 2020 19:52
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mobby_6kl posted:Northern Norway, good idea in mid-August? Wizzair has a new flight to Tromso and although the departure airport is a bit out of the way, why the hell not since I'm not getting a real GTFO vacation this year probably. Thinking of spending a day or two there and then setting out to Nordkapp. If you do end up doing this, do a trip report at some point. I've been casually planning a Norway roadtrip as my next 'big trip', whenever that can be, and I was thinking of taking around 25 days to go from Stavanger to Tromsø and back. I was looking into it and Nordkapp seems kind of lame except as "to say you've been there" kind of thing, and otherwise not worth the drive from Tromsø (9 hrs each way) — and that the time would be better spent on say, Senja island. Also it's not even the northernmost point of continental Europe, as it's on an island, and besides that there's a more northern point a few km away, but that's not connected by road. YMMV but it seems like if it wasn't something on a geographic checklist, it would be rarely visited. I don't think there's any way to search for dog-owning homes on AirBnB, and IME the ones I've been to that did have dogs tend to not show that on their listing anywhere. Best bet is to go for AirBnBs on farms.
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Sep 3, 2020 13:59
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Saladman posted:If you do end up doing this, do a trip report at some point. I've been casually planning a Norway roadtrip as my next 'big trip', whenever that can be, and I was thinking of taking around 25 days to go from Stavanger to Tromsø and back. I was looking into it and Nordkapp seems kind of lame except as "to say you've been there" kind of thing, and otherwise not worth the drive from Tromsø (9 hrs each way) — and that the time would be better spent on say, Senja island. Also it's not even the northernmost point of continental Europe, as it's on an island, and besides that there's a more northern point a few km away, but that's not connected by road. I've been to the Southernmost point of the Eastern hemisphere so there's that aspect but you're probably right about Nordkapp, it's way the gently caress out there. The thought was also that it could be more about the journey then the destination (+also potentially check in in Sweden, Finland and Russia) but I haven't researched if that's really the best use of time up there. I've heard about Senja before though so maybe that'd be better. Anyway, since our government stopped giving a poo poo about covid I instead booked two weeks in Spain during October. Might as well get the roni while sitting on the beach instead of at the lovely mall. Thinking about just chilling on the beach for a few days and then doing a roadtrip around southern Spain and/or Portugal. No ideas about specific destinations so far. Also lol Spain has comically cheap car rates. Last time in Barcelona I rented an Audi A4 for 3 days for like 30EUR. There was no catch then but this is nuts  Even the not so ridiculous compact cars are like 50EUR for 2 weeks. I guess it's better than paying for their parking but then there's the wear and tear. Cicero posted:Our Airbnb in Naxos was the top half of a duplex, the bottom half was a nice old couple who lives there with a dog. The dog running around was like the best part of the trip for the kids (my son and his friend), he was very friendly and would follow us to the beach (only like ~100m away). Are there any good ways to search for hotels and the like that have on-site pets? Because that would be dope.
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Sep 3, 2020 18:35
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I dunno, I'm not sure a Norwegian road-trip would be the best idea during the winter... Our trip to Norway didn't quite reach Nordkapp but we went to Alta which is interesting enough for a day or so. There's a UNESCO World Heritage collection of rock carvings just outside town which is quite intruiging, and in the "how the gently caress is this a World Heritage Site" department, there's also part of the Struve Geodetic Arc trig chain on a hill nearby as well. Oh and there's a cool Sami museum on the main highway where it crosses the arctic circle. Be aware that driving in Norway is a pretty frustrating experience. There's only a tiny section of freeway (between Oslo and Bergen), so everywhere else in the countryside is a maximum speed limit of 80 kph. The roads are often narrow and winding, there's speed cameras everywhere, and penalties for speeding are pretty draconian. But there's incredible scenery for a lot of the way, and some genuine highlights around. Lofoten Islands is one spot we absolutely loved, and of course the fjord country as well.
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Sep 4, 2020 00:33
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webmeister posted:Be aware that driving in Norway is a pretty frustrating experience. There's only a tiny section of freeway (between Oslo and Bergen), so everywhere else in the countryside is a maximum speed limit of 80 kph. The roads are often narrow and winding, there's speed cameras everywhere, and penalties for speeding are pretty draconian. But there's incredible scenery for a lot of the way, and some genuine highlights around. Lofoten Islands is one spot we absolutely loved, and of course the fjord country as well. I went on a road trip around Switzerland with a buddy and two Norwegian girls like 10 years ago and they were so freaked out by my driving on the highways — at the speed limit of 120 kph — and asked me to slow down. I think I slowed down to 110 and then switched the HUD to miles per hour. I'm a very relaxed driver and have never had anyone else complain about my driving my entire life. That is one nice thing about Swiss roads, besides that there are no potholes in the entire country until you get into really deep mountain farm roads: while there are speed controls everywhere on the highways, when you're in the mountains, speed cameras are crazy rare and you only have to really worry about the primary speeding risk of "death". I very rarely saw people drive like an rear end in a top hat like Top Gear's Richard Hammon ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYn4k4rX_WU ). I imagine his crash was on a closed course as otherwise I'm sure he would have been arrested at the hospital after his accident. Personally I try to avoid major highways as much as possible if I'm in a country with good scenery. That said... I just now flipped through on Google Street View for the main road E6 from Trondheim going north and it does look like a surprisingly boring road most of the way and which you could easily go 90-100 on. I also saw two speed cameras in my random 5 minutes of hopping around. It looks like there's an alternative coast road you can take all the way from Trondheim to Bodø, and after that you're forced on the E6. Looks like it's 16 hours by coast road vs 10 by the E6 for that 800 km stretch, although with so many ferries I imagine it takes longer than Google says. Until looking at the map just now I didn't know there was no continuous road connection all the way from south to north — funny they haven't spent a billion kroner making a bridge there. drat, it looks super nice. Hope we can actually travel next summer.
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Sep 4, 2020 09:56
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Yeah, you basically have to stick with the E6 route since otherwise it's just ferries and IME google isn't great at estimating those. From memory we took about two weeks to get from Alta to Oslo, going via Lofoten, Trondheim, Vega islands, Roros, Naeroyfjord, Urnes Stave Church, the snow road at Flam to Geirangerfjord, then Bergen on the coast, Rjukan, then finally Oslo. And yeah, there's a lot of surprisingly boring landscapes around. Way up north near Alta was some great views, Lofoten was fantastic, and of course the fjords are magical, but yeah there's a whole lot of driving to get between them. That said, it's way more interesting than Sweden which was just mainly flat taiga and pine forests (we roughly followed the coast north from Stockholm, across that brief bit of Finland and up to Alta). Like I said, it's slow roads with cameras and harsh penalties. Doing 81 in an 80 zone is a 75 euro fine, doing 86 in an 80 zone is a 200 euro fine, and it gets worse from there. I also have a feeling that 15+ over the limit includes comes with a mandatory prison sentence.
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Sep 4, 2020 12:57
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Thanks, always great to hear someone with local experience. I wasn't thinking about a roadtrip in the winter, just checking out the northern lights and the reindeer and what not for a few days. A friend of mine spent a week or so driving around the south and really enjoyed it so I was looking forward. Sucks about the slow roads, I can certainly stick to the speed limit if necessary but fines for 1 over are a pain in the rear end.
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Sep 4, 2020 17:30
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webmeister posted:Yeah, you basically have to stick with the E6 route since otherwise it's just ferries and IME google isn't great at estimating those. From memory we took about two weeks to get from Alta to Oslo, going via Lofoten, Trondheim, Vega islands, Roros, Naeroyfjord, Urnes Stave Church, the snow road at Flam to Geirangerfjord, then Bergen on the coast, Rjukan, then finally Oslo. Have any special suggestions of stuff you found that's not in every guidebook and blog? Looking at this more, surprisingly I could not even find a single blog online with a recommended "full tour of Norway" itinerary — but it looks like about 5 weeks would be reasonable for a reasonably-relaxed pace — 3 for the southern region and 2 for Bodø-Lofoten-Senja-Tromsø-Nordkapp. Online people suggested that calculating distances at a 60 kph rule of thumb would be much more reliable than using Google's driving time estimates, possibly with the exception of the E6. I think my maximum time I can take off is 25 days, including the drive to and from northern Denmark for the ferry, so it looks like I'll have to leave everything north of Trondheim for another time. 35 hours each way from Oslo to Nordkapp is a lot, and the one-way drop-off fees are insane, like €800+. I'd take my own car anyway, but I was surprised at how cheap rentals are: only like €250/week for a midsize SUV like a Qashqai for mid-July with unlimited mileage. Rentals were more than 2x the price in Iceland when I went a couple years ago. I don't think I'll save that much money by driving up versus the cost of two flights + a rental. I was also surprised that the ferry from Kiel to Oslo is financially viable for the operator — it's like €450 each way for 2 people and a car for the 21 hour trip. Conversely, it's €120 and a 2 to 4 hour ferry from Hirtshals in northern Denmark to either Larvik or Kristiansand in southern Norway. Conversely it's a 10 hour drive direct to Oslo or 11 hours if you drive to Hirtshals in 5hr, take the 4hr ferry to Larvik, and drive 2 hours from there. It seems like it'd make the most sense to take the ferry to Kristiansand on one way, and then do a full drive back on the other if doing a loop around southern Norway. Anyway I guess I have a poo poo ton of time to plan this and hope that a COVID vaccine comes out before next summer, which does look kind of promising at this point. Now just to hope I don't develop island fever before now and then, as I don't think I'll be doing much tourism & travel in the meanwhile
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Sep 8, 2020 11:59
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If you can stomach it, consider doing camping and the like while you're there - obviously weather dependent as well. Since we had a month and a mid-sized SUV (Volvo XC40), we basically just stopped at Ikea and Biltema in Sweden on our first day and bought some supplies, so that we spent probably half of the nights on that trip camping. Most campgrounds also have cheap cabins which are very basic (usually a bed, table and heater), but for the price it's pretty good. Gotta economise your dollars in Norway somewhere! One of my favourite spots in Norway was Urnes Stave Church, a wooden church that dates back to the 11th century. It's a World Heritage site and the setting is just mind-blowing. Lofoten is pretty cool though I think a lot of people know about that. And the Snow Road across to Flam was quite cool (heh), even during the middle of summer when we were there. I really enjoyed the Bryggen district of Bergen, though I wasn't hugely taken with Oslo tbh. Not sure why, it just didn't especially grab me like Copenhagen or Stockholm.
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Sep 9, 2020 02:14
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webmeister posted:And the Snow Road across to Flam was quite cool (heh), even during the middle of summer when we were there. I really enjoyed the Bryggen district of Bergen, though I wasn't hugely taken with Oslo tbh. Not sure why, it just didn't especially grab me like Copenhagen or Stockholm. Snow road looks cool, although I'm also kind of drawn to the tunnel just for the sake of having driven through it, even though it looks boring AF and I've been through the Gotthard tunnel probably 30 times. I did a week trip from Oslo to Bergen about 14 years ago (drat, been a while) and I got the same impression as you, and I think we spent 3 nights there. I loved Bergen, was "eh" on Oslo, so I don't think I'd spend any time there on this trip unless it's to pick up or drop off a friend at the airport. We didn't overnight anywhere except Bergen and Oslo so I haven't seen much of the countryside. In Iceland we did an every-other-day in a tent (vs B&B) which I thought was a good balance between sleeping well & not spending a ton of money. Plus, some of the camp sites in Iceland were absolutely stunning and worth it over a B&B just for the experience—especially the Thakgil campsite was memorable as one of my favourite night stays anywhere (30 minutes up the mountains on a one-way dirt road), so I'm hoping I can find places like that in Norway. The campsites in continental Europe that I'm used to are generally overrun by groups, almost invariably Dutch, drinking and blasting their stereos until midnight or 1am. Otherwise it seems like wild camping should be easy — not really to save money or avoid Dutch campers, but more because camping in a fenced lot with 50 other tents and camper vans is kind of the opposite of what I want from a wilderness trip regardless of noise. I've done a fair amount of wild camping in the Alps and it is always A+++ and also always hard to get out of the sleeping bag in the morning.
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Sep 9, 2020 11:03
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I don't remember any of the campgrounds being particularly noisy or Dutch, though the one at Lofoten adjacent to the ferry wharf had a few rowdy groups. Everyone was catching the early ferry out the next morning so you got to give them the stinkeye all day on board which was fun. Most of the other tourists we encountered up that way were Germans in colossal motorhomes. We didn't do any wild camping though, I don't think. Maybe just one night.
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Sep 9, 2020 15:32
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Just came back from Istanbul and wow, what a fantastic city. I think I'll just go there again if EU doesn't let me in.
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Sep 19, 2020 19:19
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I like trains. Is there anything that's like Scott's Cheap Flights, except for trains in Europe? Basically a newsletter with unusually cheap deals.
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Sep 20, 2020 13:45
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Cicero posted:I like trains. Is there anything that's like Scott's Cheap Flights, except for trains in Europe? Basically a newsletter with unusually cheap deals. Best bet (afaik) is to sign up for the mailing list of whatever country you're in or would like to travel in. For instance I'm signed up with Oui.SNCF's newsletter and I'll get emails whenever they're running some great deal, e.g. https://en.oui.sncf/en/deals I do think it's very country-specific though. For instance, Switzerland's SBB does not really do sales*, as trains in Switzerland are priced per KM and not according to demand. I think the international train travel market is so small, and except for the UK the domestic trains so consolidated, that I imagine most countries will do it like SNCF with national promotions on their own website, and I doubt there's enough market for people like you who just want to get to just whatever country and take a train that is a good deal for there to be a "secret flying" equivalent for trains. *The SBB does have "super saver" tickets and special "ski & rail" tickets, but these are kind of conceptually different from what you're asking, as it's not some limited time promotional sale, but rather it's at specific prices that you can more or less always get, but which are subject to certain conditions. Saladman fucked around with this message at 13:32 on Sep 21, 2020 |
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Sep 21, 2020 13:30
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OK, I mentioned several months ago that my trip to France was cancelled because of COVID. It's been five months, and Air Canada and Priceline are still refusing to offer me a refund. Both of them just push responsibility onto the other. I filed a complaint with DOT several weeks ago but haven't heard anything from that. I opened a dispute with AmEx as well, and the refunded my money initially, but then they took it back when Air Canada complained. I'm genuinely not sure what to do at this point or who to talk to. Any ideas?
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Sep 21, 2020 16:30
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