Friday, August 6, 2010

The British Pound bites

86 GBP sounds great, $136 / night sounds expensive. 126 GBP - okay, but for $200 / night I want something other than a pink quilted faux-satin bed cover in a flowered wall-paper room with only an open shower.

Take the amount in GBP & divide by .63. That's your American dollar. At least it's better than the rate in 2006 (I was using a Europe Through the Back Door as a reference) when it was .55. And I'm not comparing us to the Canadian dollar, which we nearly equal these days. I loved traveling to Vancouver & getting a 25% discount on everything!

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Another What I Learned In School Today

Orbitz Travel Insurance - You have to OPT OUT.

I was filing away my paperwork from the flurry of purchases & planning from last night when I reviewed the policy I received in my email.

The policy didn't match the company I expected, nor did it match the charge. Now, I bought my policy through InsureMyTrip.com and thought they had a database error. No, in fact they don't have that policy at all.

If the email I rec'd when the policy arrived hadn't had actually stated something about orbitz.accessamerica, I would have had no idea what was going on because OF COURSE, Orbitz does not fully summarize all their charges when they send you the freakin' confirmation of your purchase.

It's great they have a low price guarantee, but turns out, the detail of this add'l travel insurance is on my itinerary IF I EXPAND THE FREAKIN - (minus) sign on some Add'l Charges thing. I thought "Taxes", not Travel Insurance.

I sent my complaint in FWIW (which is zilch)

British Air - !$#@@#$$#!@$#

Guess what I learned in School today:

British Air charges for advanced seat selection!
$30 for economy seats on the international flights per person, per seat
$15 for the economy seats on the inter-European flights, per person, per seat

Their policy USED to be (until Sep. 2009) no advanced seating assignment earlier than 24 hours. This is archiac, but at least it didn't leave you with a "taste" in your mouth. EVA air only allowed seat assignments 30 days prior to take-off. Other airlines are like that.

However, in 2009, it appears that BA decided to "allow" customers the "opportunity" to book their seats in advance - for this hefty fee. !@#$% though - the pricing we got for the ticket was good enough that I went ahead & paid the add'l fees to get the two seats in the row assignments in the planes where 3 is the norm. The 9 hour & the 3 hour flights, oh yes, I don't want to be sitting in the middle.

Driving tour

It's looking like it's gonna be an 18 day driving tour through Romania, Bulgaria & the most Western tip of Turkey. Carpathian mountains, painted monastaries, the Valley of Roses, the Black Sea Coast spas which used to be the hang-out of the technocrati of the old Soviet Union, not to mention the Turkish spas with the silk bazaars.

I spent the weekend googling as much as I could to get my hyperlinks together.

This site, motoroads.com, has been the most helpful for car rental information - cross-border - for these E. European countries.

Romania's Tourism website is much better than Bulgaria's. The best train info I found was there.

I'm not setting an agenda yet. I've just been exploring my transportation options. This means learning my geography. I've set up my map for the trip if you're interested in how the itinerary will form up. My 2011 Turkey map.