And the oil price keeps on rising…

May 23, 2008 By 1 Comment

Last month I wrote about how the price of bio-ethanol in Germany had gone up for the first time since I bought my bio-ethanol car, however it is still much cheaper than the prices at the petrol pumps last weekend: around 1,559EUR per litre!

Today those prices look set to rise even more, as the price of oil rises to $135 per barrel!

What is shocking is the fact that this is a 50% increase on the price that I was blogging about only half a year ago.

So where is it going to stop?  How long until we reach the 2EUR/litre price?

Filed Under: Bio-Ethanol Tagged With:

Where to stay when the roads are blocked

May 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

When I visited Bolivia I was lucky for two reasons:

1. The trip had been organised by people who had been there before

2. I had friends there who helped me with any difficult situations

This was important, as part of the trip had to be brought forward by a day due to a possible strike or road-block.

Quite what the reason was I don’t remember, but I was lucky because using our connections we were able to re-arrange travel to and accommodation in Potosí at short notice.

But what do you do if you’re travelling on your own and don’t know who to ask for help? What happens if, as often happens in some parts of Bolivia, there is a sudden strike and the roads get blocked? What happens if your flight gets cancelled and you have to stay in a town like Santa Cruz or La Paz for another night when all your friends live in Sucre?

Bolivia is not exactly a mainstream tourist country, so many online booking sites do not give much coverage to it. One that does, however, is called Hotels Combined.

Hotels Combined is a site that allows you to search for hotels in a particular city, although you do not actually book the hotel through them. They are collating the information from different booking systems to give you a one-stop search system – and this gives them the advantage of being able to give more comprehensive cover for Bolivia.

I wondered what would happen if I was stuck in Sucre this evening and looking for a room for tonight. Not only did they find me one – at a hotel called “Cruz de Popayán” – but it would only cost me $17!

Of course, I could have used the official Sucre website – but this only gives a list of hotels with telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and some websites. No prices, and no availability. Oh, and it’s all in Spanish too – which doesn’t worry me too much, but I’m sure not every visitor to Bolivia can speak it.

So Hotels Combined would have saved me both time and money (and is available in 12 languages)! Now I’d just have to find my way to the hotel, check-in and sit down for the evening with the local newspaper to see how long those road-blocks are likely to last…

Filed Under: Bolivia, Hotels Tagged With: , ,

Stopping over in Frankfurt

May 21, 2008 By 5 Comments

Frankfurt is a central hub for many European flights, and I am often asked about things to do or places to stay for short “stop-over” visits.

The trouble with short visits of only a few hours is that you have to get from the airport to Frankfurt itself, and then back again in time to check-in for your flight. Although there is a good train connection between the airport and the city centre (a line called the “S8”) you need to allow plenty of time for delays finding your check-in desk and gate. The airport may not be as big as in some European cities (eg. Heathrow or Barajas), but it is complex enough still the same. If you are flying from Terminal 2, you will need to get off the train and onto the monorail to change terminals.

But if you do have a few hours to spare, then you can always buy a one-day rail ticket and travel around Frankfurt by train to see the sights. If you are visiting at the weekend, you might even like to take a ride on the Ebbelwoi Express – a tram that runs around Frankfurt serving traditional local snacks and drinks. The ride takes about an hour and goes through most of the older parts of the city.

Of course, if you have a bit more time to spare then you might like to sample the nightlife of the big city and stay in a hotel for the night. Generally speaking, hotels in Frankfurt should be booked in advance as they tend to fill up quickly if anything is on in the city such as trade fairs or concerts. The best way of finding a good hotel at a reasonable price is often to ask for recommendations. But if you don’t know anyone to ask, then you need a good online resource to give you some alternatives.

I have booked hotels online in the past, only to find out that people I met later with local knowledge had better options for me that were not available in the booking system.

So I was interested to find a site called Hotels Combined, where in Frankfurt alone they have over 300 hotels in their system! I had a look at what was available at short notice for the coming weekend, and found offers starting at around 30EUR per night, which sounds very good value for money.

The fact is, that Hotels Combined are not actually booking your hotel room – they are searching through different booking systems to find you the best offer. Once you have selected a hotel and price, they forward you to the relevant system so that you can book your room. But wait! Before you do that you can read reviews that other users have put in the system after their say. For example, you might be interested to find our where you can free WLAN access, or how far the hotel is from the main train station.

What is also interesting about the site, is that it covers some of the smaller towns outside of Frankfurt. I am a big fan of staying outside of the city centre in places such as Bad Homburg and Königstein, the latter of which I visited myself recently.

I word of warning if you are travelling on budget airlines, though. Frankfurt is not the same as Frankfurt-Hahn – that is over 100km away! But don’t worry, even around Hahn there are lots of things to do and places to see (such as trip on the Rhine). And there are hotels there as well…

Filed Under: Hotels, Towns, Travel Tagged With: , , , , ,

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