Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

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).

In an ideal world, a direct non-stop flight is definitely the way to go. One check-in and you’re gone.

However, the growth of discount airlines means that in many cases an indirect route is considerably cheaper and can also offer you a lot more choice in the way of departure times. The downsides are that you generally need to collect your bags and check-in for the second flight and you run the risk of a delay on the first flight knocking you off the second one.

The bags sure are a hassle but if you’re travelling light, it’s a manageable one. Where you do need to be careful about is the time between arriving from the first flight and departing on the second one which needs to allow for delays. You could go with the minimum time between flights in a terminal but are better to add an hour or two (possibly more at peak times) to be sure of making the connection. Actually, at peak times I’d be inclined not to risk it if the second airline is a discount one (“normal” airlines will let you go on the next flight, discount ones will sell you another ticket).

Funnily enough you seem to get these flights cheaper. So, for example, my flight next week is around £70 for a direct non-stop one vs £50 for the two stage one. Not only that, but the £70 flight gets me here after midnight whereas the two stager gets me here for teatime which is always a lot easier on the system.

There seems to be something of a drift from issuing Visa cards to issuing Mastercards in the UK at the moment thereby reversing the previous trend which was to only issue Visa cards.

Although it doesn’t really matter which you have in the UK, it can matter a lot when you go on holiday and generally it’s best to be carrying both Visa and Mastercard abroad. In that respect the switch of my Halifax Visa card to a Mastercard suits me as that gives me a Mastercard credit card from them and a Visa debit card but others could easily find themselves with a Maestro card and a Mastercard which isn’t a good combination as Maestro isn’t nearly as useful as Visa debit and you’re left with two cards on the same system which isn’t good either.

Not a catastrophe for sure but do make sure that you have both varieties of card handy well in advance of your next holiday.

Of the hundreds of people who have stayed with us over the course of this year, only two or three have paid using the Nationwide credit card which is crazy as they’re the only place that doesn’t charge to use your cards overseas.

Perhaps more crazy though is that of the dozen or so couples who live in Spain and have used us as a pitstop on their way to/from the UK, only one used a Nationwide card as they’re spending quite a considerable chunk of their income on bank charges. Quite how much is staggering. For example, a friend who lives in Brussels let drop once that he just used his Halifax card in the same way that he had done when living in the UK ie he would lift £20 or £30 each time he needed some money and likewise when he was paying for the groceries or whatever.

Most people read the bit in the credit/debit card charging information that says “currency exchange 2.75%” and figure that he wouldn’t have run up much of a bill. However, there is a transaction charge on all overseas use of the card of, at that time, £2 (and I gather it’s now £3) PLUS the 2.75% foreign exchange charge. So, that £20 cost him £2.55 ie 12.75% and, yes, he was paying around 12% of his entire income each month on bank charges!!

Clearly it’s quite different if you’re living abroad vs going on holiday but that minimum charge soon mounts up if you lift small amounts of cash. Whilst it’s much better to use the Nationwide card and pay nothing, if you are using a fee charging card you should lift a minimum of £100 or so each time and thereby reduce your costs to 4.25% to 4.75% depending on your bank and, whenever possible, use your credit card for purchases rather than making cash withdrawals.

See our guide at holiday money for more information.

If you’re living outside your home country then the answer isn’t an obvious one.

Say you’re living in France and you’re from the UK. In that case, the language you use within the family will be English whilst the language you use outside the home will usually be French, won’t it?

Well, not necessarily. For example, in our case for a variety of reasons this year less than 10% of our guests were French. Thus, in practical terms in 90% of the time we ended up using English with the guests. That’s not because they were British mind you because under 10% were; it’s because of that 90% non-French clientele, almost all of them had a preference to communicate in English rather than French (they were largely German and Dutch).

Which has resulted in a series of odd complaints, mainly from the French guests. We weren’t greeting everyone in French, nobody spoke French, etc. Seeing as we can see where the various cars come from as people arrive we actually greet them in the most appropriate language we can muster whether that be English, French or Spanish. If it’s a German number plate then we kick off in English because we know that 99% of them speak it better than we do.

What we can’t obviously do is insist that all the guests speak French as one French couple seemed to want going by their complaint. In fact, they were the only French couple staying that day and were surrounded by Germans, Dutch and Spanish who all chose to speak English to each other whilst having breakfast.

The peculiar common thread behind these complaints is that the French seemingly assume that in a French hotel all the staff will be French and so will all the guests which seems pretty weird in these days of widespread international travel.