Archive for the Travel News category
We know traveling as a woman alone can sometimes be tricky, from worrying about safety to finding an all-girl dorm. So if you’re a female backpacker or solo traveler, have been traveling or are planning to hit the road alone in the near future, we want to hear from you!
We’re looking to find out what makes female backpackers tick, so why not help us out by telling us about yourselves – share you travel plans, travel tales or top places to visit, in our biggest ever survey of female travelers!
What’s more, anyone who fills in the survey can enter our prize draw to win a copy of High Heels and a Head Torch: The Essential Guide for Girls who Backpack by Chelsea Duke, courtesy of Pan Macmillan publishers. It’s the essential guide for any girl on the road!
The three girls that send us the best travel tips will all get a copy of the book – enter at the end of the survey, or send your answers to competitions@hostelbookers.com, with the title ‘Women’s Travel’ in the subject line). The results will be published here on the 24th-30th August.
We’ve also got some exciting stuff coming up in the future for all single female travelers - so check our website or our new blog for more information!
We’re cracking out the champagne (or cheap cava) over at HostelBookers…we’ve just heard that HostelBloggers, our old blog (and the daddy of blog.hostelbookers) has won a budget travel award!
Online travel tool Tripbase have named us as one of the ‘Best Budget Travel Blogs’ out there – chosen by their panel of travel experts who scour the web every day, and ranking alongside top bloggers eurocheapo and vagablogging.net, it’s a huge compliment to receive such a prestigious award.
You can still check out HostelBloggers selection of articles and travel guides online, but for now, here’s hoping our new blog will be as successful!
Tripbase Blog Awards 2009
We wouldn’t exactly call ourselves ‘cheapskates’ here at HB, but we’re pretty obsessed with saving everyone a bit of extra cash – so we can spend every last penny on our travels! Our thrifty ways must have paid off, though, as we have just won an award for our ability to save you guys money!
WiseBread – a community of bloggers dedicated to ‘living large on a small budget’ - has just rated HostelBookers one of the top budget travel resources and the ‘easiest way to book hostels all over the world’. We’ve also been named one of the Top 40 ‘Most Useful Travel Websites For Saving A Fortune’.
But aside from all this modesty (!), the website itself is a great find for budget travelers – WiseBread is full of money-stretching tips and amusing advice on how to score freebies and discounts. Want to learn how to ‘hustle free drinks’ or work out the perfect budget for your trip? We certainly do!
The world may be used to snowy scenes elsewhere, but here in London they’re so rare that they inevitably cause much celebration (and disruption…)!
This was how lovely the city (and home of HostelBookers) looked yesterday under several inches of snowfall – not that we ran out with a camera at the first sign of a few flakes, or anything like that…
The ‘heaviest snow in 18 years’ meant more than just pretty pictures and snowball fights, though… The capital ground to a halt, with no buses operating for most of the day and a large part of the underground and overground rail networks shut. Hundreds of flights in and out of London’s five airports were also cancelled.
Bad news for the many travelers in London at the moment, as well as for us commuters.
But when this only happens once every two decades, why not just forget about transport, enjoy the city and build a snowman? It certainly reveals a unique side of London to backpackers and visitors!
Just a quick heads up as our friends over at Rough Guides have a new series of their ‘The Rough Guide to…’ TV show returning to British screens this coming Monday (it’ll be on Channel 5 at 19:30).
The series offers an insider’s take on travel destinations, eschewing the traditional ‘wish-you-were-here, god-how-I-love-the-Maldives/Marbella/Madagascar/wherever-it-is-that-I’ve-been-sent-to-by-my-production-team’ format, for a more sincere look at genuine backpacking destinations (like Koh Phi Phi, Berlin, Reykjavik and Fez).
It’s probably not all for backpackers, mind, but it’s just about as close as you’ll get at the mo to a serious travel show in tune with backpacking sentiments (we’re still waiting for the first made-for-backpackers TV show in the UK).
Clips from the last series can be found here.
JC
UFO sightings, HostelBloggers thought to ourselves this morning, are rather like London buses: you wait for ages for one and then a couple come along at the same time.
Cliched similes aside, UFO sightings are back. And in a big way, too. This week saw a spate of sightings from Cheshunt, England to the wilds of the Northern Territory, Australia.
The latter incident, which HostelBloggers read about in the Herald Sun, is the more interesting. Let’s break it down: “Ray Aylett, Normie Hooker and Alan “Doc” McIntosh were sitting on their pergola at Muckaty Station with three European backpackers when a bright light appeared.” (It’s a gripping start, we felt.)
The light, naturally, was unidentifiable (other than the fact it was a light, of course). But, reading on, HostelBloggers felt sure that the truth would be out there somewhere. And so it proved.
While elaborating a little on the mysterious events, our friend Mr Aylett explained how “there was no way their judgement could have been affected by alcohol“. He then, slightly mystifyingly, went on: “Me and Doc had had a couple of beers…”
Ah, beer. It’s almost inevitable that it had a part to play (doesn’t it always when UFOs are involved?) After all: European Backpackers. On a road trip down the Stuart Highway. Late at night. (On a pergola…?) Without a tinnie or two? Now that really would be unexplained.
We’re willing to admit that Venice, so steeped in history and intrigue, has always been a bit of a favorite of ours. And this week it’s managed to grab our attention yet again!
The city has been cropping up in the travel news thanks to a recent (and significant) nearby archeological discovery. As is so often the case in Italy, it seems that the city we see today is just part of a much larger settlement on the Venetian Lagoon that dates back to Roman times.
By using satellite imaging, archeologists have been able to find the extensive remains of a wealthy town (complete with temples, theaters and palaces) about three feet beneath the ground in the countryside at Altino, near to Venice’s Marco Polo Airport.
Full excavations are expected to begin on this fascinating discovery in the near future. And when they’re uncovered, the ruins are sure to be yet another reason – if more reasons could possibly be needed! – to go to Venice.
Ever on the lookout for interesting offers, travel deals and ways to save a bit of money traveling, HostelBloggers got wind of this rather interesting travel writing competition over at British newspaper, The Independent.
Basically, they’re offering some lucky wordsmith the chance to travel round Europe for free, honing their travel writing skills by blogging for a national newspaper as they do so.
Destinations on the itinerary include the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, and all you’ve got to do to be in the running is say in a measly 200 words which city in Europe tickles your fancy and why. (You can either read more about the competition details here or just email competitions@independent.co.uk with ‘SABMiller’ in the email subject line.)
This is the only slight hitch, really – that you might have to sell just a little of your dignity rights to the brewers, SABMiller, who are sponsoring the initiative… But when the prize is a minimum of four weeks’ free travel in Europe, we’re sure that whoever wins will be a more than enthusiastic beer ambassador!
The Oktoberfest: if there’s one thing the beerily-inclined backpacker needed like a dead rat in a stein, it was for it to get more expensive. Which, of course, is unfortunate, because that’s precisely what’s happened!
According to Jaunted.com, the price of your average oversized tankard of beer is to rise by about 5% as a result of higher production costs. Their article on the devastating news from Munich includes the distressing fact that the average cost of a stein of beer will come in at a budget-derailing €8.13.
Not that a little thing like a famously expensive beer festival getting a little more expensive should put off the merry piss artist. As long as you follow a few simple tips for the Oktoberfest, which can be found all over the web, you should be alright.
Alternatively, if it really does stymie plans to go to Munich on September 20 (or for the 16 days – count them! – of dutiful drunken debauchery that ensues thereafter), there’s always the Cannstatter Beer Festival in Stuttgart (Sept 27-Oct 12), where much the same effect can be had for just a little less…
Airports in Paris will be laying on “Free Dance Lessons” for travelers throughout the summer, Yahoo News tells HostelBloggers.
The lessons are set up according to where travelers are flying off to – salsa for Cuba, hip-hop for New York etc. Which begs the question: what dance do they learn if they’re flying to England – Morris dancing?
Anyway, if it takes away from the sheer unmitigated horror of airports – and air travel, generally – then it’s alright by us.
