watch the times
As I was perusing airfare, I discovered rather cheap airfare ... 819.00.
But then I saw the times....leaving on 10/05, but not arriving until 10/07!
If it looks too good to be true, it probably is!
Also, I tried leaving from ORD (Chicago) instead of Madison; almost no difference in price.
I did search at nwa.com (I have frequent flyer miles with them) 862.00. 10/05-10/16
Labels: airfare
Continuing to look for hotels
hotel.de is pretty nice.
Hotel Taunus in Berlin (Germany)
Monbijouplatz 1
10178 Berlin
49.90 euros/night
centrally located 7.2 ratings out of 10. (some of the reviews are actually in german, so I can't read them.)
Hotel Am Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin (Germany
Stresemannstraße 36
10963 Berlin
54.00 euros/night for single
60.00 euros/night for double
Centrally located, 7.4 out of 10.
I like those prices!
Trip and Hotel pricing
10/07/08-10/17/08
MSN - TXL via Continental $848 (madison-cleveland-newark-berlin)
10/11/08-10/16/08
TXL - LHR via Lufthansa $137
Cheap Hotel Searching:
Berlin: 10/07/08-10/11/08 4 Nights:
Hotel Agon Frankfurter Allee, Berlin, Germany $133/night (farechase.com) 3 of 5 stars downtown central location is likely why it is more expensive.
Comfort Hotel Weissensee, $57.06/night (hotels.com) 3 of 5 stars Looks like it has a private bathroom. Can't tell about location. only 3 reviews all good. If we can figure out if it is near a train, it might be a good option.
Winter's Hotel Berlin City Messe, $64.77/night (hotels.com) 3 of 5 stars (shower on floor, NOT in room) Five minute walk to S and U trains, not centrally located.
Pension Berolina, $66.70 (hotels.com) 1 star. Centrally located. Shared bathroom. Review: "This hotel is actually a hostel. It is on the spartan side and a bit noisy in the mornings, but for a budget-conscious traveller in Berlin, it is an excellent pick -- clean, friendly,affordable given the local rates, and directly across the street from the Charlottenberg S-bahn station. Highly recommended -- we did a little looking around in person and couldn't find anything better in the 50-80 Euro range."
Hotel.de (think hotels.com, but for Germany) Searching Arendsee, near Ziemendorf for 10/09/08-10/10/08
Hotel Haus am See in Arendsee (Germany) $86.00/night
This is actually a spa! And they rent bikes so we could bike to Ziemendorf, which is a couple of miles away.
Ambiencehotel Zur Wolfsschlucht in Kläden (Germany) (45euros a night)
Actually these both sound pretty nice. This is farther away.
London: Cheap Hotels
THere are a number of cheap hotels listed in hotels.com, but I'm suspicious of some of them, as they have 1 star, and few reviews. They seem to have no bathroom in the room.
Carbigoe Hotel, London, $91/night. 1 bad review, but 4 neutral/good ones. Seems centrally located. ONly 1 star.
Royal Court Apartments 3 stars. $115/night. 100% good reviews. Centrally located.
I like this one a lot.
Wembley Plaza 4 stars. $121/night 75% good reviews.
And so forth.
I'm thinking we fly back to Germany the day before we leave and stay in a hotel that night near the airport so we can get to the airport easily.
Something like
Day 1-5 fly into Germany - fly to England
Day 5-10 Fly into England - Fly back to German
Day 11 Fly out of Germany, back to US
Hotels near airpots are generally much cheaper.
Booking a Multi-Part Ticket
If you go to britishairways.com
and try to book a multi-part ticket.
choose some dates to go from ORD (Chicago)- TXL (Berlin), then TXL - LHR (london), then LHR - ORD.
I chose 10/2/08 - 10/9/08 BERLIN
then 10/9/08 - 10/16/08 LONDON
$1216
I talked to a friend of mine and she said that reason it is so expensive to get into London is because they add a lot of airport fees.
Here's some other choices.
10/7/08 - 10/12/08 BERLIN
10/12/08-10/16/08 LONDON
$1185
10/13/08-10/17/08 BERLIN
10/17/08-10/21/08 LONDON
$1155
But if you throw TXL - LHR into a Orbitz search, you get stuff like $227 (round) (10/23/08-10/28/08). So a US-BERLIN round trip would likely be cheaper, even with a side round trip to London than splitting....I think...
ACtually, just did another search on Farechase, and they are saying $138 roundtrip from Berlin-London for 5 days.
Labels: airfares
AirFare Check
MSN - TXL (Berlin)
10/09/08-10/23/08
2 weeks: $818.00
09/30/08-10/09/08
10 days: $818.00
MSN - London (Heathrow)
09/30/08-10/09/08
10 days: 1057.00
10/09/08 - 10/23/08
10 days: 1091.00
If we leave from Chicago: 722.00 to Berlin (10/09-10/23)
Plannage
Hi: I've been trying to figure out some stuff to do in Berlin; I'm a big shopper, you are a big shopper. We should definitely go shopping. Museums? Maybe, but I say we go to a few things, and spend the rest of the time shopping. I'm thinking
- Checkpoint Charlie
- The Berlin Wall
- The really tall TV tower that you can go to and ride to the top
- Couple Museums
- Zoo?
- Lots and lots of shopping.
What do you think of that?
Labels: shopping
