Foreign Perspectives

Over the next few days it’s going to be pretty hectic here as the Spanish are coming, as usual for their pre-Easter break.

Also, as usual, they wait ’til the last minute to book. Just a few weeks ago, we had nobody down for the next few days yet as of tomorrow we’re pretty much full until Monday and everyone is from Spain.

The last minute business seems to be getting worse each year as we had several days worth of bookings arriving this morning including the first double booking for the year. The last minute aspect is something that none of the booking systems are really geared up for in that it can be several hours between the guest booking and the system notifying us of that booking which, of course, is plenty of time for a competing reservation system to slip in another booking for the same dates.

Popularity: 12% [?]

If you’re thinking of a visit to the Uffizi in Florence then you’ll find it worthwhile to have a look at the virtual Uffizi before you go.

The Uffizi is, like most major European museums, just too large to take in with a single trip and this site will help you to concentrate your visit on the works which most interest you rather than ending up trying to run around all over the museum and ending up taking nothing in properly (a trap that’s surprisingly easy to fall into).

Although the site contains photos of most of the works in the museum, you’ll still want to see the originals which are very, very different than looking at a photograph of them, no matter how well it might have been taken. If you’re aiming to see specific paintings, do bear in mind that the museum change the exhibitions from time to time so you’re not necessarily guaranteed to see all of the works that are shown on the site (although, obviously really major works are permanently on display).

To help you in planning your visit the site follows the plan of the galleries themselves but, of course, with a number of search options that you can use. In addition to that you can buy museum tickets and there’s information on a range of tours that you can take of Florence.

This is one of the most complete museum sites that I’ve come across with an almost comprehensive set of photos of the works and lots of information about each one.

Popularity: 6% [?]

People seem to be moving online in droves in search of holiday accommodation if the stats on my own accommodation listings sites are anything to go by.

Whilst ordinarily, I expect to have to upgrade the hosting for the collection of sites once a year, I’ve already had to upgrade it three times since Christmas such is the rush of people looking around for summer holiday accommodation. The increase in traffic from December looks like coming out around eight fold which is a major jump by any standards.

Whilst financially it’s no problem in that hosting costs have dropped like a stone in recent years, technically it’s heralding a problem that may arise this summer, somewhat ahead of my expectations. That problem is that I’ve only one more upgrade that I can do before I have to move from a shared hosting plan to a VPS hosting plan that essentially provides me with my own virtual server (actually shared by around four others).

Plus points of that upgrade are that it will give me the extra bandwidth that I’ll be needing by then and that the websites should run a lot faster but on the downside it costs about five times the price of the service that I’ll be using just prior to it.

Popularity: 3% [?]