Adventure Delayed
S and R's big adventure will likely be delayed until at least 2009 due to economic factors like the horrible US economy, the lack of vacation time, and stability of our own lives in the near term. Check back later.
Labels: vacation
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
Still about the same, but some new sites
Check out booking buddy.com. You can see some other websites that I never saw before.
I just got an price of 800 bucks (give or take) from GRB to TXL. Nothing great yet. But it lets you search all kinds of sites. It was kind of neat. I am hoping to run across super cheap flights about $500 bucks or so.
I priced a flight from Berlin to London for 4 days, It was about $230 USD. It would be nice if we could find a flight to Berlin OR London and visit a few days in each. At least in London, I can find out if we could stay with Kate. That would save some $. It looks like the flying/ travel time can be about 14 hrs. So the extra couple of days might be nice.
It was a bit less expensive to fly to London from Green bay ($30), but it is an option.
??
I used the dates of October 11 to 21st.
