New 50,000miles feature!
You're off to Norway and need to know how much a Krona's worth or you're doing a bit of Christmas shopping from Austrailia and want to know what your Dollar will get. So what do you do?
Just log onto 50000miles and use the Universal Currency Coverter that you'll now find at the bottom of every page! Provided by
xe.com it's the best free rate source I've ever used and now you can look up all sorts of weird and wonderful exchange rates right here on 50,000miles!
We're working on new features all the time so keep checking!!
Obscenely Cheap Flights!
I know , I know - no posts for 4 months and then 2 in five minutes - the London bus syndrome!!
Any way I digress.......
.......... Ryanair are currently offering some obscenely cheap fares, £5 oneway including the tax, with no blackout period over the holidays and valid weekends too!
50,000 miles have just booked a return to Oslo from Liverpool for 2, the weekend before Christmas, for
£20 that's including the tax etc for the both of us. Unbelievable!!!
Get them while you can!
50,000 miles Top Tip - Use the new "
Find lowest fares" tab on the Ryanair site to see all flights within a 20 day period and pick the cheapest / best fit for you! Brill!
More Tripadvisor Reviews Online Now!
As part of 50,000 miles commitment to its loyal readers I have "suffered" 2 more 4* hotels in the last couple of weeks and you can read my reviews on Tripadvisor now.
K West - A cool 4star in Shepherds Bush, apparently popular with the media and celebs
The Lennox - A little boutique hotel in Knightsbridge
Enjoy (I know I did!)
The Italian Riviera Part 1
Taken a bit of time I know but here we go with a little guide to the Italian Riviera. A beautiful part of the world with great seafood to boot. Look out for part 2 and photos soon ......
The Italian Riviera.....La Dolce Vita!Ah Italy! Land of great food and wine, spiritual home of the cappuccino and all in all a great place to watch the world go by. We’ve been to Italy quite a few times now and decided to try somewhere different and after hours looking through guidebooks plumped for the Ligurian coast, between Genoa and Pisa, specifically the stunning villages of the Cinque Terre (literally Five Lands).
Getting There and Getting SetupHaving got some fantastically cheap flights (see article below), we picked out a campsite in Levanto, gateway to the Cinque Terre and planned a route down from Nice using the Trenitalia website. This included a stop off in Monaco to have a look-see at the principality and the famous grand prix circuit, but although the new train station is very whizz-bang it doesn’t have a left luggage office, so we settled for deux presion and continued on our way, crossing the border at Ventimiglia / Ventemille depending which countries train you’re on!
Anyway after 4 countries in one day we set up camp high on the terraces of
Campieggio Acqua Dolce. This isn’t the greatest site we’ve stayed on but its proximity to the beach and the town centre made up for this. Time for a couple of top 50000miles tips;
1. Cheapy Eurohike tents are great but its well worth investing in some better pegs, especially when travelling abroad where the ground can be incredibly hard. The v-shaped ones seem to be the best.
2. Lilos! Don’t bother carrying a heavy airbed across the continent with you, just buy a couple of blow up lilos from a beach shop and sleep tight on rocky ground.
Living the beautiful lifeThe saying “when in Rome….” originated in Italy for a reason, they really do have life sussed. Cappucino is only to be drunk at breakfast time, probably with a brioche and best enjoyed with the pink Gazzetta della Sport. Take your time and watch life pass you by.
The nip to the private beach with deckchairs and umbrellas, cool off in the sea and go home for a long slow lunch when it gets too hot in the middle of the day. Return to the beach in the afternoon for some more sun before enjoying a glass of vino tipica with some lovely snackettes to warm the stomach up for your dinner of pasta and in this areas case seafood, seafood and seafood.
Bliss!! Except we didn’t do the middle of the day bit and went that shade of pink that only British skin will go. Mistake noted for next time!
Speaking of the food, it was as usual fantastic. The seafood of the area was superb, fresh anchovies on a base of potatoes with a tomato sauce and seafood risotto were both beautiful local dishes that we’ve recreated at home. Va bene!!
Copthorne Tara - Kensington
Tripadvisor have published my second review
here.I am staying at the Melia White House tommorow evening so watch out for the review in a week or so.
AMSTERDAM from £9 incl tax!
www.jet2.com The low cost airline
Amsterdam from ?9 one way incl taxes
from Leeds Bradford or Manchester
BOOK NOW AND VISIT THIS GREAT CITY THIS SUMMER
Book now at www.jet2.com/jet2/lff
www.jet2.com The low cost airline
Super Cheap Flights!
I've just had an email from
Ryanair advertising flights at silly prices, and though I'd share the joy!
Liverpool to Pisa return £24.43 (inc al taxes)
Blackpool to London return £27.18 (inc al taxes)
Go on it'd be rude not to!
Tips for Booking Cheap Flights
As some 50,000miles fans will know my wife and I are off on our annual jaunt to Italy in mid June. We’ve decided to go to the Italian Rivera this year, somewhere new, somewhere exclusive!
So as usual the hunt began for a budget airlines solution, made more difficult this year by moving away from easy travelling distance of Stansted, the home of the likes of Easyjet and Ryanair. Manchester Airport is owned by the city council and to keep council tax down landing charges at Ringway, as it used to be known, are very high so none of the usual suspect fly to the sun cheaply from there……
... but now we have Jet2! This budget carrier have recently began to fly a number of routes from Manchester at knockdown prices. Weehay!
The rules for budget airline bliss are the same wherever or whoever you fly with / from though…..
1. Book early – but not too early! 50,000miles has found from experience that the best deals can usually about 6 weeks before you want to leave. Too much earlier than this the airline still offers good fares but are not their best.
2. Be flexible on dates – the airlines know that most of us want to fly, at or near to, the weekend and bump prices up accordingly. Most carriers offer the option to see flights for the day before and the day after. Keep clicking and think about how about how important it is you’re their by a particular date. Jet2 have a great feature called the low fare finder which lets you see the prices for a whole month at a glance, very handy. I wish they all did this.
3. Be flexible on destination – yes okay so some of the airports the cheapos fly too are a little out of the way, and are, well putting it nicely, shoeboxes, but for an entrepreneur the likes of Ryanair landing at your local airstrip is like striking gold.
At every little airport I’ve been to there are usually plenty of taxis and most will have dedicated shuttle buses to the real destination which are timed for the arrival of the flights and are (usually) very reasonable.
Take Milan for example. There is a dedicated airbus service direct to Milano Centrale for 12 euro, which is probably quicker and cheaper than flying to one of the city’s 2 big airports. Great stuff!
4. Be creative – get a map out and have a look at the options of where you can fly to. On our next trip we’re flying in to Nice (from Manchester) and out of Pisa (to Liverpool), and saving a fortune! Have a play and see what you can come up with, you might even see something extra by getting to see an different city.
Also, by doing it this way you get to pay in euros to come home and, as per usual for rip off Britain, you’ll save pounds. Hopefully the EU will make sure that this unfair practice doesn’t last too long.
5. Sign up! – Each of the budgets has an email newsletter letting you find out about the best deals without lifting a finger. I’d also recommend signing up to the CheapFlights newsletter which sort of grabs these all together into a weekly brief
6. And lastly – but by no means leastly (if that’s a word), book it when you see it! The cheapest seats are limited so if you see a great price (single figures or under) book it!! Watch out for the cut off points for specials too as you may see an unbelievable price one evening, go to bed, decide to book it in the morning, and then you think you must have dreamt it because the price has rocketed. Trust experience on this one!
The result Mrs 50,000miles and I are flying to the Riviera, in sunny June for
£63! No that’s not each, that’s the total including tax!
So what are you waiting for? Check out the links below and don’t forget to send me a postcard!
www.jet2.comwww.ryanair.comwww.easyjet.comwww.cheapflights.co.uk
