Foreign Perspectives

The pattern of bookings from the Spanish is quite different from all the other nationalities that stay with us.

For everyone else, the bookings are spread right through the year, albeit with a lot more people coming over the Summer peak. However, with the Spanish there are a series of periods of one or two days when all of a sudden we’re almost completely full with bookings from Spain.

We thought we’d gotten used to the general pattern of these bookings last year ie lots around January 5th, the week before Easter and one other weekend but this year we’re getting a lot more of these clumps. Why? We’re not completely sure but it looks like one of the sites that we list with has bumped up their promotion in Spanish markets.

Not that I’m running out of photographs but I thought that it was time that I started on the regional guides for our Whole Earth Guide so after a little enhancement of the code for the site, the Languedoc-Roussillon guide made its debut this evening.

It mightn’t look terribly spectacular but that simple enhancement is the first step to let me start integrating the guide into the various B&B/self-catering listings sites though I’ll need to run up a few more regional guides to make that worth doing. Courtesy of the way which the software works, you’ll see at least one detailed article for each of the regions which I roll the guide out to.

Still haven’t made a bean on the guide as yet but hopefully that’ll begin to change over the next month or so as the various articles are coming pretty well on google searches.

One thing that’s fascinating about blogs is that they are written by people from all over the world so you can get a little slice of what it’s like somewhere completely different.

I’m a bit of a sucker for travel stories and of course there are loads of travel stories in Asia which is brilliant as it’s a really interesting area of the world, totally different from this side of the world and with lots of things to talk about.

For example, they’ve got the largest attraction in the world (the Great Wall of China, of course) but naturally they do ordinary stuff out that way as well so you can find out the best makeout spots in Sydney too which I must try out some of these days 🙂

What’s interesting too is that two of the cheapest cities for shopaholics are in the broad area of Asia ie Hong Kong and Bangkok which are both interesting places to see for all kinds of other reasons. I’m not sure if Buenos Aires really qualifies to be the third in that list though as it wasn’t all that cheap when I was there.

If you cast your mind back to 2004, we had an appointment for the medical visit for the residence card for Wendy just before Christmas. After sitting for around two hours we told them that we couldn’t wait any longer as we’d guests coming. They said they’d make another appointment for us.

We just received a phone call saying that the appointment is for September 29th. Yes, almost three years later!

Still, at least they’re making up for it now as it’s an all day affair rather than the brief visit that it was supposed to be last time.

We’re getting to the point of having far too many options now.

Initially, we just had Hamburg in the frame. Great Christmas markets were the big attraction of this one but then there are Christmas markets all over Germany (supposedly Dresden and Neuremburg are the best). The flight prices aren’t too bad but then seeing as southern Germany is driveable from here we’ve started looking at some cities in the south. Downside of this is that we’ll need a hotel with parking but on the upside we’d be able to see places outside the city eg the Black Forest.

I always fancied Poland but Wendy was none too keen to start with. Both our Polish guests and Norman H have come up with views to push her towards accepting that as an option. Definitely a fly to destination given the distance but the prices aren’t too bad. Downside is that it’ll be darned cold there over Christmas.

Valencia is a driveable option but the Spanish don’t really “do” Christmas so not so good from that point of view. Very much the warmest of the options (well, except for Morrocco but Wendy doesn’t like that option at all).

In theory parts of northern Italy are also driveable with Milan and Venice both being options. Venice is seriously expensive itself but Lido de Jesolo is much cheaper and a very practical location if you want to see Venice.

No, nowhere in France…. we want something different and besides the French don’t do Christmas anyway (which is, of course, how come we can clear off somewhere).