Here or there? A a price comparison of the best cities to visit this May

by McLean Robbins on

Planning a quick weekend away or a summer vacation? Wouldn’t you like to know where you’ll get the best value for your dollar? Sure, the exchange rate fluctuates, but we’ve tracked some of May’s best cities via a Universal Currency Converter and a little help from our friends over at Frommers.

According to Frommers, your best bets for May include:

  • Saint-Pierre, Martinique, where the exchange is $1 = €.67 and the average three-star hotel for two is $178 per night.
  • Apia, Samoa, where the exchange is $1 = 2.26 Samoan Tala and the average three-star hotel for two is $79- $176 per night.
  • Stockholm, Sweden, where the exchange is $1 = 6.01 Swedish Krona and the average three-star hotel for two is $199 – $232 per night.
  • Bad Ischl, Austria, where the exchange is $1 = €.67 and the average three-star hotel for two is $74.
  • Jeonju, South Korea, where the exchange is $1 = 1,072 South Korean Won and the average three-star hotel for two is $74 – $111.
  • Montpelier, Vermont, where the the average three-star hotel for two is $90 – $135.
  • St. Louis, Missouri, where the average three-star hotel for two is $73 – $108.
  • Wasagaming, Manitoba where the exchange is $1 = C95¢ and the average three-star hotel for two is $146.

Have cities you’d like to compare? Use the Universal Currency Converter or send us a note!

[Flickr via Tax_Rebate]

Most expensive flight in coach? You tell me

by Jerry Guo on

Grant just had some in-depth and helpful posts about the best times to buy airline tickets. That got me thinking about a couple recent near-purchases on my part. What’s confounded me when checking out ticket prices is how geographic distance often has little correlation with the cost of the flight. Yesterday I was checking on flights from Newark, USA to Port Moresby, Papa New Guinea. The cheapest economy ticket? $4,000.

Yet some other equally hard to get places are somehow cheaper. A while back, I was trying to book a ticket to Easter Island, which by the way is the place farthest away from another piece of land (2,000 miles). You would think tickets would be expensive, right? They were only $1,600! Flying to the Galapagos Islands, 500 miles off the coast of Ecuador, was even cheaper. Less than $1,000. And a Newark to Beijing flight for me in March was only $800.

What about you? Keeping other things constant, which means I’m not talking about booking a ticket for tomorrow, what is the most expensive place you’ve flown to in economy class?