Foreign Perspectives

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We ended up choosing Venice as our Halloween trip basically because the flights to it from our selection of local airports were among the cheapest to anywhere and it seemed to offer us the most of those cheapo destinations in terms of attractions and general interest.

I was surprised to find that there’s quite a selection of fairly reasonably priced appartment accommodation right in the city itself. Last time I looked everything was at crazy prices as you would expect for such a popular and compact city. Getting to the accommodation sounds like something of a trek though. We’re flying Ryanair so “Venice airport” is actually Treviso which is about 30km outside the city (vs 10km for Marco Polo, the main Venecian airport) and involves a coach trip (EUR 9 each, each way) as Treviso isn’t well connected to Venice. Still, once we get off the coach we’re pretty much in Venice and it’s quite a nice boat trip round to the dock nearest our accommodation.

Water transport in Venice is quite expensive although to be fair if you’re based right in the city as we will be you don’t really need to use it that much. Sure, we’ll go on the round-the-island trip but other than that and probably a trip to Lido we’ll likely only be heading out on the water to see the glass making at Murano so don’t expect to spend too much on getting around (it’s quite a walkable size of city).

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Travel insurance is something of an oddity even in the context of the peculiar insurance market.

Up until quite recently, it’s been tied directly the sale of the holiday itself and in many cases people still think of it that way. However, the tying of travel insurance to the holiday by the travel agents has been illegal for a number of years now and you’re free to get your travel insurance where-ever you wish to these days. Almost always, that will mean somewhere other than the travel agent as the insurance on offer from them is rarely good value.

Things to consider when you’re shopping around are:

1. your own health: if you’ve anything that could be considered a “pre-existing condition” then you need to be upfront with that to the insurance company or you could find that if you need treatment whilst on holiday, they won’t cover it;
2. what your house insurance covers: some of your more expensive items might already be covered for worldwide travel (typically this would be the likes of jewellry);
3. where you’re going: if it’s within Europe it’s going to be a lot cheaper than if you include America as healthcare in the US is seriously expensive;
4. the length of time you’re going: many policies limit you to 30 days max, others to 90 and if you’re going longer you may need to look at gap-year policies; and
5. how often you go on holiday: if it’s more than once a year then you should consider annual policies which cover you for multiple holidays over the course of a year.

Once you’ve all that sorted, it’s a matter of looking at one of the comparison sites such as money.co.uk and finding the best deal.

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BootsnAll is one of the better known websites amongst young travellers essentially because it offers just about everything that they’d be looking for under one roof.

So, for example, if you’re looking for cheap flights to Dublin then you’ll find loads of options here. What you’ll not find though is those of Ryanair basically because they forbid other sites to use their flight information. However, that’s not a great loss as their flights are often more expensive these days by the time you add on all their compulsory little extras and, of course, the service is absolutely dreadful. They’ve a neat little guide to the transport options to/from the airport that you’ve chosen which could save you a lot of messing about when you get there.

What you’ll also find is the confusingly titled link to youth hostels. In fact, there are far more hotels listed than youth hostels these days on the site that provides this listing service for BootsnAll. For example, if you look at Perpignan you’ll find that the four properties coming up are all hotels and the Perpignan youth hostel isn’t listed. Make sure you read the small print as to where the “hostel” is located as they’re listed by major town and in some cases the hostel is well outside the town.

Their forum is a great place to ask the dopey (or sensible) questions that we all have when heading off for somewhere exotic for the first time. It’s very much targeted at the type of place that independent travellers go ie it’s mainly the relatively offbeat places that get the best coverage. This isn’t the place to ask a question about travelling in Europe but rather a place to ask about climbing Kilimanjaro.

Finally, they have an online store where you’ll find a lot of the harder to find items that you might need if you’re heading off somewhere exotic. Before you get carried away with buying loads of neat gadgets from here, I’d be inclined to pop a question on the forum to find out what kind of stuff you really need if you’re heading off to some unfamiliar spot. Much as I’m sure the stuff listed is excellent, you really don’t want to be burdened down with things you don’t need when setting off.

Overall, it’s a good website covering a lot of the things that you’d need to have available if you were heading off on a big trip.

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