Thinking of a trip to Europe this fall? Try flying into Oslo, Edinburgh or maybe Madrid if you want to save money. With help from Expedia, Travel + Leisure magazine has issued a list of 11 European airports and computed the cost of an airline ticket today, compared with during the peak summer months. Here’s what they found, with the percentage decline in ticket prices from summer to today in parentheses. Oslo (-40%). Stockholm (-35%) Hamburg (-35%) Ibiza (-35%) Copenhagen (-30%) Madrid (-30%) Dublin (-25%) Brussels (-25%) Geneva (-25%) Edinburgh (-25%) Florence (-20%) That’s a fun list. Not to rain Read more
Geneva
A new look at the world’s best cities puts Vienna on top, but the top of the charts is dominated by cities in Canada and Australia. The Global Liveability Indes from Economist Intelligence looked at a variety of quality of life factors in cities around the world, including such issues as stability, health care, culture and environment. The list is for liveability, not necessarily what’s the best place for a tourist to visit. But it’s still instructive. Vienna was tops, with a score of 98.4 out of 100. Here’s a link to a short item I posted about Vienna recently. Read more
Brussels in Belgium has been revealed as the city offering the greatest amount of culinary choice, by a new Remitly study that looked at close to one million restaurants worldwide. Vancouver was the highest ranking Canadian city, finishing 19th overall, with an impressive 2,372 international restaurants versus its population of 697,266 (= 3.40 foreign restaurants per 1,000 people). “With eating out being something the whole world enjoys doing, Remitly wanted to discover which city offers the most diverse food options per person, when it comes to options outside of the city’s home cuisine,” officials said. “This was achieved using Tripadvisor Read more
Hungry Canadians should head for Halifax if they want to save. A new study by hotels.com and hotels.ca looked at the price of a days’ worth of food at hotels around the world and came up with some fun findings. In the past they looked at the cost of a club sandwich on the road, which I always enjoyed (the study, I mean, not the sandwich. Although a good club sandwich is a wonderful thing as long as you leave out the lettuce, mayo and tomato and skip the extra layer of bread). Now they’ve taken it further and figured Read more
FINGER LAKES OF NEW YORK – We have wineries. And we have lakes. But I think it’s fair to say Ontario doesn’t have anything to quite match the total Finger Lakes package in upstate New York. Only an hour or so east of Buffalo, which means maybe three hours from downtown Toronto, you’ll find gorgeous lakes surrounded by hills covered with pretty vineyards ahttps://jimbyerstravel.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpnd thick forests. Not to mention tremendously attractive small towns and stately white homes. The town of Geneva is one of those solid if not hugely beautiful towns. Probably it’s seen better days. But the surrounding area Read more
