What’s with flights departing from the US to international destinations being so much cheaper than the flights coming back in? Right now the price discrepency is huge.
I just randomly clicked on Rome and a date in Aug, you can get there one stop for $350 on Air Portugal, $550 direct Lufthansa. Coming back there’s no way to get anything reasonable for under $1150.
Nearly an hour wait at security.
This is only part of the line
Sabhia Gokcen is the worst airport I’ve been to aside from LGA. It’s a disorganized, chaotic mess.
Toronto’s airport has looked like that every day for months.
Eastern part of N America to W. Europe is probably the one general route I don’t always try and use miles for business class. The flights are so short I find that between dinner and breakfast there’s like 4-5 hours to sleep. So I’m going to be jetlagged no matter how fancy the seat.
On points, it’s usually a comparatively poor deal vs anywhere else too. One way biz class is like 50-60K US-EUR. Asia is often 70-75K and sub Saharan Africa is 70-80K.
Was a little bummed the first two days in Cape Town with cold wet weather and clouds completely shrouding the mountains. But after two cloudless days in a row and another couple on the way, it’s one of my favorite cities. Love places that are so picturesque wherever you find yourself in the city. Had tremendous Ethiopian food for lunch today too.
It’s true that airport does suck, and it’s so far away from the city. I think it took me almost 2 hours in a bus during rush hour just to get close to karakoy. The highlight was our bus driver and another one stopping traffic so they could yell at each other for a few minutes straight over some minor incident.
The host swore I wouldn’t be able to hear the muezzin but boy was he wrong.
I’m staying about 2 blocks away from a mosque. Don’t think there’s much hiding from it. First prayer is 5:30 AM.
One of the hotels we booked, I found for an insanely low price on trip.com - like normally it was ~$350 a night, trip.com had it for $230. All the other travel sites, and the hotel’s own site, didn’t have that price. I had never heard of trip.com, and some reddit reviews led me to believe that it could be a scam, or at best they just contact the hotel and see if they can book a room at that price.
I never like to bother anyone, but I took a shot and emailed the hotel directly, sent them the link to trip.com, they said it was legit, and they offered to book me for that price.
I am not a savvy consumer, so it was nice to stumble on something that worked out.
Nice! Hotel deals are always safer than the flight deals. I was actually trying to book a flight home from Islamabad and Trip.com had it for $670 and everything else was over $1,000. But every time I tried to book it said the price had increased $200 or something and I ended up not going for it. But I was all ready to roll the dice with Trip.com!
I flew into the new one and flew out of Sabiha-Gokcen and found both experiences quick enough. I was probably lucky to avoid long lines and much traffic. They’re currently building a metro line to the new airport, which will be nice when completed.
Damn, that sucks. I stayed in 2 different apartments and could barely hear them, but it’s probably so random and you never really know how loud they’ll be until you arrive, and different people have different tolerance levels.
I’m doing a week in Prague and about to book an AirBNB for a week. This place was solidly rated, good price, and somewhat central. Would this location be fine? I’d probably have to spend an additional $20/night to get more central, so probably not worth it for us.
Would it be dumb to try to do 2 separate day trips, one to Karlovy Vary and one to Cesky Krumlov? Karlovy Vary would be 3 hours in train, but I think if we left super early and slept a bit on the train, we could still enjoy a lot of time there then head back at like 6PM.
We did a handful of these type of daytrips in Spain (2 hrs by train each way) and found them enjoyable, and those places in Czechia look epic. We’d still have 5 full days to explore Prague as well.
We’re taking a sleeper train from Budapest to Prague one night to save on 1 night’s lodging, and also to try something new. Not sure what to expect, but we did book an entire 2 bed compartment to ourselves, so should be fine.
We booked a lot of RyanAir and Wizz Air flights and are gonna try to do a whole month long trip with just a 40cm x 25 x 20 bag (and no laptop bag or personal item) so that we’ll be good to go for the cheapest fares they offer. I wonder how that will work out.
I’ve taken sleeper trains in Europe and quite enjoyed them.
I have no idea if daytrips to those towns are viable, but one other consideration near Prague if you’re into such things is the Sedlec Ossuary. You get there by taking the train to Kutna Hora, which is about 1 hr 15, then it’s a 15 minute walk from there.
So I had booked accommodation in New Orleans but then decided to shorten my trip a bit, so I needed to move my 4 night stay 2 nights earlier. Unfortunately my booking through booking.com was not cancellable or refundable, so I contacted the hotel (via Facebook message as there’s no public email address) and asked if they could do something. They took an email address and my details and were like OK someone will get back to you.
That was June 24. On June 30 I messaged them again and was like nobody has gotten back to me, is there someone I can call. They were like “we’ve reminded the relevant people, they’ll totally get back to you! also here’s the reservations number”. Yesterday, after still no contact, I called reservations. They said the reservation isn’t made directly with us, contact booking.com (I had already tried to go via them). I called the hotel directly, got redirected to reservations. So I was like God, this is hopeless, I guess I just have to book the extra two nights before it books out or the price goes through the roof and hope something can be done once I get there. So I booked another two nights directly through them and left a rude message via Facebook to the effect that I didn’t appreciate having my time wasted.
Today I wake up to an email. “Good news Chris, we transferred your dates!”.
+1 to Sedlec Ossuary.
We had fun with the silver mining tour in that town as well.
Solid location. You don’t want to be in Prague 1 during tourist season being kept up by obnoxious stag parties at all hours. Not worth an increase in price. Public transport is cheap and ubiquitous in Prague.
Cesky Krumlov is a fine day trip. Karlovy Vary might be a bit far. Also there’s an international film festival going on there until the 9th. So it might be packed.
I’m not going until mid-September, so no festival going on in KV and Prague center will hopefully be less packed (probably not by much tho). Will also look into the Sedlec Ossuary suggestion.
Based on my experience, I predict that Istanbul’s reported population of 15.46 million people is off by at least 184.539999 million.
I’m pretty sure there are 15.46 million shopping outside my door right now.
Not every day the tourist center of the city is less packed than parts of the city where people actually live.
I need a nap. Hopefully, the temperature will drop and I can shop for some toiletries and grab dinner later.
Which part are you staying in?
Zeyrek, which is a neighborhood in Fatih. I’m a block or two away from the Fatih Mosque
