Where are you going on holidays this year?

CabbageCat · April 2017

Emp_Fab said:

I've just spent the best part of the weekend glued to the laptop, scouring holidays, flights, hotels, back to holidays, making shortlists, changing my mind, getting to the point of actually booking something and backing out because it was more than I'd intended paying, starting again from scratch, switching airports, switching dates, having Tripadvisor open permanently in another window, finding somewhere that gets 90% excellent reviews then reading one that moans like hell and it puts me off so I go back to searching for holidays, flights, hotels etc etc etc.

I do it every year.

I must be mental. I hate it.

I need a holiday to get over trying to find a holiday.

You do make an unusual amount of fuss about booking holidays. Given that the chances of any random person being worse at booking holidays than you are quite low it must surely be worth considering letting Mrs Fab do that job? Or is she one of those few people who struggles even more with Expedia than you do?

Snap · April 2017

Begur, Catalonia, July
Boston/New York, August
Somewhere in October, dunno yet, UK or abroad.

RobDavies · April 2017

Tone71 said:

Nowhere for us, the 16 year old has decided he will not come away with us (which is understandable) but there is no way I will leave him home alone for a week or two.

I was hoping our eldest (17) wouldn't come to Cyprus this year. Last time he just sat in his room most of the time and then came out for food in the evening.

If he'd opted not to travel with us, I'd have called in the Grandparents for a bit of house-sitting/anti-party duty.

Emp_Fab · April 2017

CabbageCat said:

You do make an unusual amount of fuss about booking holidays. Given that the chances of any random person being worse at booking holidays than you are quite low it must surely be worth considering letting Mrs Fab do that job? Or is she one of those few people who struggles even more with Expedia than you do?

Oh, if only it were so simple Mr Cat. Expedia is pants tbh. It can't cope with regional airports well, doesn't seem to even look at seats on chartered flights (offering, for example £1,200 for two star hotel out of Cardiff, then when you look closer, it's going from Cardiff to Amsterdam first, ignoring the big Thomas Cook jet sat on the tarmac). I'm not made of money, so just throwing bags of it at Expedia with gay abandon is out. It's almost always cheaper to go with a package tour operator to popular destinations, so I'm looking at TUI basically (as they own almost everything). Also, if I'm spending a large chunk of money and taking a day to get there, I'd like to make sure it gets decent reviews, rather than just turn up and hope for the best. Glibly taking the piss for "struggling to use Expedia" suggests you either throw bags of money at the problem, don't care where you end up or don't go abroad much.

EricTheWeary · April 2017

RobDavies said:

Tone71 said:

Nowhere for us, the 16 year old has decided he will not come away with us (which is understandable) but there is no way I will leave him home alone for a week or two.

I was hoping our eldest (17) wouldn't come to Cyprus this year. Last time he just sat in his room most of the time and then came out for food in the evening.
If he'd opted not to travel with us, I'd have called in the Grandparents for a bit of house-sitting/anti-party duty.

Our youngest will be 17 this week, he will be coming with us in the summer although on the weekend away we've just had he was very grumpy. Very hard to arrange time for him on his own in the camper though. With his older brother I think we started with a night away then a weekend then a holiday an hour's drive away then France. Luckily his girlfriend usually stays and she makes sure the house is okay.
Our only grandparent left is my 89 year old blind mother so she doesn't house sit.

CabbageCat · April 2017

Emp_Fab said:

Glibly taking the piss for "struggling to use Expedia" suggests you either throw bags of money at the problem, don't care where you end up or don't go abroad much.

I go on holiday quite a lot (see my earlier post), but I rarely do tour-operator-seaside-resort holidays. I'm more of a fan of city breaks and Gatwick is very convenient for me so perhaps Expedia (or just Google) is easier for me, but I think it's just because I'm clever and you're not.

jonnyburgo · April 2017

Just got back from a great week in Scotland, Place called Barnbarroch, lots of beaches and forests walks with the family and dog, lovely place, hoping to go to Amsterdam in October for a week.

FX_Munkee · April 2017

Slovakia for us. Mrs Munkee's younger brother has just moved out there to start a golf business.
So it's a week near Bratislava and a week in the low mountains in Liptov.
Need to start learning my Slovakian.

Stevepage · April 2017

Puerto Palencia and Devon in September. Honestly looking forward to a week in the middle of Dartmoor with the wife and new baby.

Nitefly · April 2017

hywelg said:

Nitiefly said:

@hywelg - island-hopping sounds good, how are you planning to do it - ferries? We went to Kefalonia last year, and there seemed to be ferries coming and going every day.

Also, what will you do for accommodation?

Ferries are good in the Aegean. Only the international ones from Bari, Brindisi, Venice et al call at Kefalonia unless the inter island ferry has started now but I think that was waiting on the new ferry dock being built in Vasiliki, Lefkada.There is a little one that goes in and out of Sami and Fiskardo, linking Ithaca Meganisi and Lefkada.

It's very easy, all the islands that have no airport, all tourist traffic comes in by ferry, so a lot of room owners meet the ferry and ply their wares. In 15 years of just going with the flow we only had one bad one and that was clean, just a bit dated and pokey.

You need to get the right flight in to Athens as all the main ferries leave at about 7:30 am. BA and Aegean land after midnight so we usually get our heads down in the airport for a few hours then get the Piraeus bus (X95 IIRC) at about 5:30 to the port buy a ticket at one of the many tourist offices and just go. Really is easy. This time I've booked an internal flight at 5:15 from Athens to Santorini, it was as cheap as the ferry and much quicker. 4 nights then on to wherever takes our fancy.

Lately we've been using online booking to sort rooms out in advance especially for the first and last stops. We usually don't decide where we are going until we get to the first island. And we always plan to be back at a major hub island like Paros, Naxos or Milos for the last stop before going back to Athens for a.cpuple of nights before the flight back.

Thanks for that @hywelg - very informative. However it turns out that Our Maud's idea is to find a small cruise-ship kind of thing, so we can stay on the boat but visit several islands in one trip - I'll dig a bit deeper.

Emp_Fab · April 2017

CabbageCat said:

Emp_Fab said:

Glibly taking the piss for "struggling to use Expedia" suggests you either throw bags of money at the problem, don't care where you end up or don't go abroad much.

I go on holiday quite a lot (see my earlier post), but I rarely do tour-operator-seaside-resort holidays. I'm more of a fan of city breaks and Gatwick is very convenient for me so perhaps Expedia (or just Google) is easier for me, but I think it's just because I'm clever and you're not.

You're probably right.

I'll go back to searching for my pint of Watney's red barrel in 'Racist Paddy's English Football Pub' in Torremolinos and leave you to your sophisticated soujournes in Seville. Vive la différence.

mikeyrob73 · April 2017

Kos for me this year, a change for the annual pilgrimage to Ibiza

Image: https://scdn3.thomascook.com/crop?imageUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.thomascook.com%2FH0%2F00%2F31%2F16%2FTCUK_STEP51_v2_4ba3f745353bb01a2269ba529f6307ca.jpg&maxWidth=620&maxHeight=465

Moe_Zambeek · April 2017

mikeyrob73 said:

Kos for me this year, a change for the annual pilgrimage to Ibiza

That looks nice @mikeyrob73 is that a specific resort?

octatonic · April 2017

Emp_Fab said:

CabbageCat said:

Emp_Fab said:

Glibly taking the piss for "struggling to use Expedia" suggests you either throw bags of money at the problem, don't care where you end up or don't go abroad much.

I go on holiday quite a lot (see my earlier post), but I rarely do tour-operator-seaside-resort holidays. I'm more of a fan of city breaks and Gatwick is very convenient for me so perhaps Expedia (or just Google) is easier for me, but I think it's just because I'm clever and you're not.

You're probably right. I'll go back to searching for my pint of Watney's red barrel in 'Racist Paddy's English Football Pub' in Torremolinos and leave you to your sophisticated soujournes in Seville. Vive la différence.

Fucking chav!

mikeyrob73 · April 2017

hey @Moe_Zambeek ;
yeah its called Mitsis Blue Domes Resort & Spa
our lass picked it for a change to our usual place in Ibiza so its a new one for us, looks decent and has decent tripadvisor reviews

freakboy1610 · April 2017

Rhodes in August. Never been but it looks nice online. Center Parcs for long weekends in June and at New Year. Might get a cheap long weekend away without the kids in October to celebrate my 50th (unless I can persuade Mrs F that I need a Fender 65 Deluxe Reverb!)

Moe_Zambeek · April 2017

mikeyrob73 said:

hey @Moe_Zambeek ;
yeah its called Mitsis Blue Domes Resort & Spa
our lass picked it for a change to our usual place in Ibiza so its a new one for us, looks decent and has decent tripadvisor reviews

Thanks. Looks good!

Nitefly · April 2017

mikeyrob73 said:

Kos for me this year, a change for the annual pilgrimage to Ibiza

@mikeyrob73 Kos is great, we've been twice (although not for a few years now). First time we stayed in Kefalos, second time in Kos Town. If you get chance, try to do the trip to Nyssiros, the neighbouring island - it's where they filmed Moonraker, and you can walk down into the crater.

Also it's worth a visit to the Asclepion, the original hospital set up by Hippocrates (after whom the Hippocratic Oath sworn by doctors is named).

Last time we went, there were lots of Dutch tourists, and cheap bike hire was the easiest way to get around (on the coast at least - it's a bit steep in the middle!).

Jez6345789 · April 2017

New Orleans and California,

hywelg · April 2017

Nitefly said:

hywelg said:

Nitiefly said:

@hywelg - island-hopping sounds good, how are you planning to do it - ferries? We went to Kefalonia last year, and there seemed to be ferries coming and going every day.

Also, what will you do for accommodation?

Ferries are good in the Aegean. Only the international ones from Bari, Brindisi, Venice et al call at Kefalonia unless the inter island ferry has started now but I think that was waiting on the new ferry dock being built in Vasiliki, Lefkada.There is a little one that goes in and out of Sami and Fiskardo, linking Ithaca Meganisi and Lefkada.

It's very easy, all the islands that have no airport, all tourist traffic comes in by ferry, so a lot of room owners meet the ferry and ply their wares. In 15 years of just going with the flow we only had one bad one and that was clean, just a bit dated and pokey.

You need to get the right flight in to Athens as all the main ferries leave at about 7:30 am. BA and Aegean land after midnight so we usually get our heads down in the airport for a few hours then get the Piraeus bus (X95 IIRC) at about 5:30 to the port buy a ticket at one of the many tourist offices and just go. Really is easy. This time I've booked an internal flight at 5:15 from Athens to Santorini, it was as cheap as the ferry and much quicker. 4 nights then on to wherever takes our fancy.

Lately we've been using online booking to sort rooms out in advance especially for the first and last stops. We usually don't decide where we are going until we get to the first island. And we always plan to be back at a major hub island like Paros, Naxos or Milos for the last stop before going back to Athens for a.cpuple of nights before the flight back.

Thanks for that @hywelg - very informative. However it turns out that Our Maud's idea is to find a small cruise-ship kind of thing, so we can stay on the boat but visit several islands in one trip - I'll dig a bit deeper.

OK if you like cruise ships personally I hate the idea. Much prefer to take in a place over a few days.

And most cruise ships only go to the touristy Islands like Santorini, Mykonos, Naxos etc. They rarely go to the little gems like Koufonisi, Sifnos, Folegandros et al.

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Where are you going on holidays this year?

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