Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Many years ago when Belfast was in the peak of the troubles, Belfast airport was right up there with Tel Aviv as being the safest airport in the world to fly from.

There weren’t any of the fancy scanners in those days. None of the loop detectors to find metal on you either. Yet, nobody ever managed to carry anything onboard that they shouldn’t have. How come? Simple: the security people were really well trained and knew exactly what to look for ie who would be most likely to carry something on and where that they’d carry it.

It’s a different story these days. Just a few weeks ago, I flew from Belfast to Manchester and the security was a complete joke.

The security questions asked by the checkin staff were the usual joke. Nothing special there: they’re so rehearsed in them and the passengers are so rehearsed in the answers that there’s little point in asking them nowadays.

But then it gets really silly.

I’d forgotten to bring my trusty clear plastic bag so instead just put my 30ml and 60ml bottle of contact lens solution on the top of the pile. For a change, I’d remembered that my luggage scales cause the security people to panic so I took them out of the case and put them on top of a plastic bag with some magazines I’d just bought ie in plain view.

First off, my five year old had to remove his shoes before the scan which might seem a touch silly but in that he’d been randomly selected it is quite a sensible security check.

As expected, the luggage scales caused the usual panic and the security guy rushed over after they came out of the scanner. But he didn’t check them. Nope, instead he got all difficult about the two bottles not being in a plastic bag. Now, if he’d actually been trained he’d have realised that they should have been in a plastic bag so that they couldn’t be concealed so having them sitting in plain view on top of a plastic bag was OK.

All he could do was rant on about them being in a plastic bag and point to those on sale for £1 but I didn’t have the £1 coin.

Several minutes of ranting on and his colleague intervened. Was it OK to carry on contact lens solution at all? Well, yes actually it is and in fact they are specifically listed amongst the permitted items. Was it useful for his colleague to read the ingredients of one of the bottles? Not really as I doubt very much if he was sufficiently qualified in chemistry to say what could be done with that combination of chemicals.

A little more ranting and another colleague asked if she could test one of the bottles. OK, but knowing that the solution was pH neutral doesn’t really say a whole lot.

And finally, everything was OK.

Except that it wasn’t…. nobody even looked for the luggage scales and they do look incredibly suspicious on the scanner. They SHOULD have been checked and they weren’t. The only thing worse is runner beans which look like a string of detonators and if you ever want to see a security guy really scared try putting some in your handbaggage and watch the reaction.

Not only did he completely forget about the original reason for rushing over but he even ignored me when I reminded him about it several times. What was particularly bad in this is that he fixated on a minor thing (ie two tiny bottles in plain view when they should have been inside a clear plastic bag) and completely forgot about the major thing (ie something very suspicious picked up by the scanner).

That says to me that the quality threshold of security staff at the airports has had to be lowered considerably courtesy of all the extra “security” checks that are imposed these days.

We’re in the usual lull in activity for us that lasts from the last week in August ’til the first week in September so we’ve been using the time to start thinking about some holidays for us.

As I’m currently building up the articles on Whole Earth Guide I want to try and get to somewhere that we’ve not been or at least which we’ve not fully explored.

As James has started school again we’ve basically two slots per week if we want a day away ie Tuesday and Friday/Saturday night though as we normally get a fair number of bookings over the weekend ’til we’re well outside the tourist season, we’ve really only got Tuesday at the moment.

Anyway, the overnight time limitation means that we can go at most three or four hours distance from the house at the moment so we were thinking Nimes and Valencia. Supposedly Nimes is just over two hours from us but Wendy doesn’t believe that. Valencia is definitely more than four hours so we’ll likely need to leave that ’til later on in the year which is OK as it’s warm there for most of the year.

So, short term, it’ll likely be Nimes which we’ve wanted to see for quite a while now.

Short-break holidays tend to be quite different from normal holidays in a number of key areas and hence it’s best to plan them differently too.

By “short-break” we mean a holiday that is anything from two to five days in duration. Less than two days and you’re talking a day-trip which is quite different; more than five and you’re edging into the territory of normal holidays.

In that they’re short, clearly any time lost in getting to and from your destination should be minimised. There’s little point in considering a short-break holiday that involves a flight of more than a few hours as that will mean that your first and last day will be lost in travelling to and from your holiday location.

Ideally, you should choose somewhere that you can get to by way of a morning flight and return on an evening flight as this can add up to a day to your time at the holiday destination at no extra cost. That’s not possible for all destinations and therefore should be a factor in your choice of holiday destination.

Where should you consider going? Clearly in a short-break time is of the essence and you should avoid places that would require long journeys when you get there. So, regional holidays are out. Yes, you could fly to Rome and do Florence, Pisa and Venice at the same time but you’d end up travelling between the cities all the time. Bear in mind too that chances are you’ll lose most of the first and last days so your notional “5 days” is really only 3 days.

This being the case, it’s usually best to look at holidays based in a single location. In many cases you can easily fill three days in a single city: Barcelona, Berlin, London, Paris, Prague and Rome are ideal for this. Don’t rule out travelling out of the city though as, for example, Versailles is an easy day-trip from Paris. Likewise, if you just want to hit the beach, do that rather than trying to see the whole region.

In that the flight times are a critical factor in the planning, it’s best to get a regional guide book such as the Rough Guide Europe or Lonely Planet Western Europe to begin with. However, once you’ve chosen your destination, the best guides for cities are those from the Eyewitness guide series or, where they don’t cover the city/region, get the Lonely Planet guide covering the region you’re going to. It’s always best to get the guide covering the smallest possible area so, if you’re heading for Montpellier, get Lonely Planet Languedoc-Roussillon rather than Lonely Planet France.

As far as choosing flights go, SkyScanner is by far the best tool for the job. To get some ideas, you can put in point of departure as UK, “London Any” and click search. This will pull up a list of all the flights departing from any of the London airports in ascending order of price. Outside of the main holiday periods, you’ll usually find that return flights including taxes start from around £20. Whatever you do, don’t continually check prices on the Ryanair site as this will cause the Ryanair computer system to raise the ticket prices (checking via SkyScanner doesn’t do that unless you click “up to date price” constantly).

What about somewhere to stay? Before you book the flights you should investigate the accommodation options. For instance, whilst flights to Venice cost as little as £30, accommodation there can easily run to £200 per night. On the other hand, flights to Berlin are similarly priced but accommodation can be had from £30 per night. Don’t overlook apartments as many are quite cheap and, of course, it’s usually a lot cheaper if you do your own cooking or get takeaways.

For accommodation, I find that Booking gives pretty comprehensive coverage but you can sometimes get lower prices on HostelWorld (which covers B&Bs through to five star hotels these days) or on HotelClub however of these only Booking doesn’t have a booking fee.

If at all possible, it’s best to avoid car rental on a short break as that adds even more lost time in picking up and returning the car not to mention parking and, of course, all the costs associated with those. However, if it can’t be avoided, HolidayAutos always seem to have the best rates if you book a few days ahead (more in peak periods).

As far as packing goes, forget the suitcase and think carry-on only. That saves you more time on packing, you avoid the lengthy wait for luggage too and it’s cheaper as well. We’ll be covering what to pack in our holiday planning series shortly.

Money? You’ll certainly need some; see our holiday money guide for a comprehensive review of how best to take it with you.

We’ll be covering a number of short-break suitable destinations on Whole Earth Guide over the coming months.

This is part of our series on holiday planning.

No thanks to the ADA guy at the airport who is plain useless but we now have a car for the next ten days or so.

OK, I’ll grant that the ADA franchise in Perpignan is tiny but that’s really no excuse for the dreadful customer service that they’ve shown. In fact, given that there’s rarely any queuing at the ADA desk the customer service should be excellent and indeed up to now we’ve been recommending people to go to them because of that. No longer though.

We’re hoping that we’ll not need to be renting a whole lot longer as our car is supposed to be here sometime this month. Can’t really see that happening myself but who knows? Even in France sometimes things do happen early!

The next challenge is to find some economic way to get myself over to Dublin for the Open University Spanish exam next month. Somehow I’ve managed to get to the point where I “only” need 20% in each of the next two (very large scale) assignments to get an overall pass on the assignments which “just” leaves the matter of the exam.

As a bit of a treat, we’re also planning on heading off to Berlin for a few days after the exam which also needs organising.

From this side of the Atlantic, America is largely seen as a hotel type holiday destination but, of course, the whole range of accommodation options are available. There is one difference though… the quality of accommodation is much higher than you’ll be used to.

Take for example the self-catering accommodation options (vacation rental in American). Las Vegas is one place where you’d definitely be thinking hotels but you can rent a quite spectacular penthouse apartment (condo in American) right in the centre.

More typically villa type places include Lake Tahoe where you can choose from a whole range of luxurious villas in a spectacular location and the more central Palm Springs area.

How much for all this? Well, a typical villa runs from around $1500 to $2000 per week (£750 to £1000) which is more expensive than the average in Europe but then what you’re getting for the money is a whole lot more than is generally available.