Oz Scapes

By Mike Smith

 Once settled into our Paris vacation rentals, prepare to begin your Paris vacation! Everyone in Paris gets picked up in front of Paris vacation apartments, better still request that Paris based 4 Roues Sous 1 Parapluie meet you at the Palais Garnier opera house. They shuttle you round Paris in a chauffeur-driven convertible 2CV. In the event of rain, take metro lines 7 and 9 (near many of our apartments in Paris) to arrive at Mirosmenil for the Muse Jacquemart Andr. The museums audio guide tells the story of how Nlie Jacquemart met banker Edouard Andr when she was painting his portrait. Otherwise refer to our Paris apartments guide for an abridged version. They married not far from a couple of our Paris apartment rentals and travelled the world collecting art, now stored in their very romantic private museum. After your visit museum, head back to our Paris apartments or treat yourselves to tea and cakes under a Tieopolo ceiling in the caf. You could always opt for taking one back to our apartments in Paris.

Time for a drink. Take the bus from St Philippe du Roule station (near our Garnier Paris rentals) to the Arc de Triomphe. In Summer, take the lift to the 7th floor of the Htel Raphael to enjoy martinis with a view of the setting. Our Paris vacation apartments are only a short cab ride away. The showstopper is the vertical garden in the inner courtyard overflowing with hundreds of exotic plants and flowers.

Leaving this glamorous worlds behind, direction of your Paris vacation apartments, stroll down to the river and jump on a Bateau Bus (river boat) at Pont dAlma. The boats run every half an hour the ride is magnificent, taking in some of Paris major sights the Louvre, Muse dOrsay to name just a few. You will also sail past a number of our Paris apartment rentals. Jump off at Htel de Ville and stroll into the Marais for dinner. The ‘Marais’ is today amongst Paris’ most characteristic neighbourhoods. Chances are youre staying here in one of our Paris vacation rentals. It is thriving, trendy and a delight to explore and on the door stop of our favourite Paris apartment rentals. It’s medieval lanes are home to impressive mansions, museums, up-and-coming artists’ galleries, Paris apartments and designers’ showrooms. That said, the area is artistic rather than touristy and has been christened the latest refuge for the Paris artisan fleeing the tourist-trampled St-Germain-des-Pres, location of some of our other apartments in Paris. No surprises then that some of the citys most authentic bistrots, brasseries, cafs and street markets are to be found here. There are so many restaurants to recommend in the area. These are detailed in your Paris apartment rentals guide. One of our favorites is Georget, adjacent to our Marais Paris vacation rentals. The family is called Georget but the restaurant is also known as Robert et Louise, the anachronism giving you some clue for the charm that awaits. This comes highly recommended during your vacation in Paris. All of our Paris vacation rentals are in or near the Marais, so from here its a gentle stroll home.

We look forward to welcoming you on your Paris vacation to one of our Paris vacation apartments.

About the Author:

Paris Vacation Apartment Rentals - Pad-a-Terre offers Paris vacation apartment rentals including Thanksgiving vacation special deals & packages.

Top Four Worst Reasons to Travel Somewhere
By Fred Jones

 Vacations can be wonderful breaks from the day-to-day routine of daily life. If done properly, a vacation can be very therapeutic, and you may return home with a clear head, increased energy and positive outlook for the near future. However there are many ways a vacation can go wrong. Often times people make some very simple yet catastrophic mistakes in selecting a vacation destination. Below is a list of the top four worst mistakes you can make when planning a trip.

1. Picking a place that “sounds” exotic

There are many places that sound like an exotic, beautiful place to visit, but in reality are far from desirable. Examples of this phenomenon are Myrtle Beach, Queen Elizabeth Islands, Tazmania or Cameroon, Africa. Before settling on any one destination, make sure you do a good amount of reading on what the location is actually like. How it is named and what it sounds like are often completely irrelevant.

2. Traveling to a country whose climate you haven’t researched

Always research the climate of a location you plan on traveling to. There are many places on this Earth that experience wildly varying weather patterns depending on the time of year. For example, it would be a grave mistake to visit most South American countries in May, for this is right in the middle of the rainy season. The same applies to visiting Alaska during the winter, as you will likely only see four hours of daylight each day. Drastic changes in climate and weather patterns are common to many popular travel destinations and you don’t want to be caught off guard, so make sure you know what to expect.

3. Selecting a destination in a lawless area

Believe it or not, you are allowed to travel to destinations that have very harsh or even non-existent laws. Not everywhere has the fair and just legal society that America does, and if you are a reckless college student who thinks he has nothing to lose, you may be sorely mistaken. Russia, for example, is an extremely unsafe country to travel to if you don’t know where the safe areas are. There are more mobsters than police in Russia. Every 18 minutes, someone is assassinated. This type of information might be useful if you have the tendency to be loud and party in public! Venezuela is another country to avoid, as murders happen on an average of five per day. These murders are often over very petty things such as dirty looks or insults. Do some diligence and make sure a place like that is not where you are headed.

4. Choosing a country because it looks nice in Google Images

The images search feature offered by Google (known commonly as “Google Images”) can be both helpful and very deceiving if you are tying to get an idea of where to travel to. Often the images shown will be of the very small “good part” of the country, and the vast “bad areas” are not shown, leading you to believe that the whole country looks as it does in the pictures. For an example, lets run an images search on “The Dominican Republic”.

Fred Jones
airline tickets

Last Minute Holiday Savings Is So Last Year
By Roger Munns

 In recent years booking a last minute holiday has made a lot of sense - with ever more destinations available, a flexible tourist has almost been certain of being able to grab a last minute holiday at a bargain price.

But things are changing, and a new report suggests that for those who book next year’s holiday well in advance they could be the ones who will be paying less, and with holiday companies cutting back on the number of holidays they sell due to recessionary times, last minute holiday bookings could be more expensive.

The report, by a leading consumer organisation, studied holiday prices for July and August this year, and compared the prices to the same holidays when they first went on sale last summer.

Those holidays were on average a thousand pounds (around US 1700 dollars) higher in cost for those who had waited to book last minute, compared to those who had booked a year in advance, changing the trend of the holidays market in Europe from the previous five years.

Last minute holidays, and the niche travel industry that has grown up around it as more people switched from brick and mortar travel agencies to booking holidays on the internet and becoming their own travel agent, has grown as internet usage has grown.

Before the internet was widely used the British market for example traditionally saw the highest number of bookings for a summer holiday in January and February, and while the first two months of the year are still high booking months, their importance has slowly declined in the last decade as a whole section of the population took advantage of tour operators slashing prices when their flights and accommodation weren’t full.

With a recession tour operators will be cutting the number of flights and available hotel rooms to popular holiday islands like Malta for 2009, making a bargain last minute holiday even more difficult to find than in the summer of 2008.

But times change, and after the report the equivalent of an earthquake hit the British travel industry when the country’s third largest tour operator, XL, went bust in September.

According to one Malta holidays travel site - and the majority of Malta’s tourists originate from the UK - holidaymakers could well now not have cheap prices as their number one priority, but whether the travel company they book with is still going to be in existence by the time their holiday comes around - with a resulting swing back to holidays booked last minute, not because of the prices, but the chances of their holiday company still being in business is higher.

So in the fast moving travel industry, a trend away from last minute holidays as the savings weren’t there to the same extent as in previous years could be back as quickly as it went as other considerations factor in - such as a travel company’s ability to survive a recession, and medium size travel firms could be squeezed as holidaymakers place their faith in the biggest companies, hoping that the chances of them being able to fulfil a holiday are higher.

For more on-line travel news for the island of Malta including Luqa Airport and cheap Malta flights see yourmalta.com

They also have other Malta holiday categories such as the Malta weather, a map and photograph galleries.

Find The Best Travel Deals Online For Australia

adventure travel australia

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.