Group vacations – French villas are hot!

by Annie Scott on

Want to make all your friends swoon? Rent out a villa in the south of France for an affordable, peaceful vacation.

Want to make all your friends love you? Take them along!

French villas have become one of the top destinations in the great tradition of group vacations. I love group vacations; it’s like an extended party. Get everyone you like together and watch them interact for a week. It’s fascinating, often scandalous, and makes one feel like they’re in some 17th century comedy of manners, or an old-Hollywood movie.

One villa I recommend is Villa Plantat, near the small town Quissac. Villa Plantat (plantat means “to plant”) is an elegant house set on 400 acres of beautiful grounds with an orangerie and a private spring-fed swimming lake, and is located close to both historic Roman ruins and the Mediterranean sea (just 35 minutes away).

Villa Plantat can provide a private provencal chef for just around $20 per meal, and they also have twice yearly yoga retreats (2 hours of yoga per day plus special events; not yoga boot camp) in May and September. $1380 per person includes accommodations, wine (!), and classes.

Villa Plantat is available year round for $4,200 per week (price drops by $500 for additional weeks) and sleeps thirteen. That’s just $323 per person. Or, for ten people, $420 per week.

Save up your miles and get to the south of France. It’s an idyllic, quaint, and quintessentially lovely experience you won’t forget.
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Trains block signals to prevent cell calls

by Mike Barish on

Being trapped in a confined space with a person who is talking loudly on his cellphone is most certainly one of the circles of Hell. Perhaps no place is worse for such a scenario than a train. Be it a on commuter line like New York’s Long Island Rail Road or a travel rail like Amtrak, the last thing you want while stuck in that metal tube is to be near anyone who is blabbing away on the phone. But now one British railway company is taking measures to completely block cell reception in their railway cars.

According to the Daily Mail, British rail company C2C has begun coating some windows on their trains in a film that blocks cell signals. They designate one car per train as a quiet zone where phones, music devices and other electronics are not permitted and conversations must be conducted “quietly and with consideration for others.”

The film prevents train personnel from having to struggle to enforce the quiet zone rules. And passengers have been very supportive of the initiative thus far. Having once snapped at a person on the train for being too loud on their phone (and receiving a round of applause from my fellow passengers after my tirade was completed), I am not surprised by the rave reviews from C2C customers. And since the general public has proven itself incapable of considering the greater good when choosing its behavior, I am thrilled to see that technology is filling in the gaps left by thoughtless ne’er-do-wells.

C2C runs train service between Essex and London, so if you find yourself in that neck of the woods, drop us a line and let us know if you enjoyed your time in the quiet zone. As for the rest of you, keep it down to a whisper, put your phones on vibrate and maybe try reading a book on the train. Just turn the pages quietly, will ya?

Nordic budget airline Sterling files for bankruptcy

by Anna Brones on

These are not great economic times, and they’re taking a toll on the travel industry. Icelandic-owned and Denmark-based Nordic budget airline Sterling announced today that it will file for bankruptcy, halting all of its aircraft. The slowdown of the travel market and rising oil prices put financial strains on the airline a year ago, but now with the fall of the Icelandic economy, and hence the funds of the airline’s owner, Sterling had no choice but to call it quits.

And although things are obviously bad for the airline, things aren’t any better for its passengers: the halting of flights has left thousands of them stranded at airports across Europe. Sterling announced that tickets purchased online at the Sterling website would not be refunded, nor would return flights be honored. Coming to the rescue, rival airline Scandinavian Airlines announced that it would offer Sterling passengers and crew members seats on its flights to Copenhagen, depending on availability. But that will only help a small handful; all in all, an estimated 40,000 customers are said to be affected by the bankruptcy.

October 31 onwards: £1 rooms at the Hoxton Hotel

by Abha Malpani on

The last time we posted about cheap rooms ($20 rooms at the Leading Hotels of the World), we were thanked for the information, but for nothing as the promotion failed.

Here’s an excerpt from an email sent by LHW to fellow Gadling blogger Jerry Guo, apologizing for the situation: “…We are extremely sorry for the inconveniences we have caused and regret to advise you that the US$19.28 email promotion scheduled for tomorrow October 2nd shall be postponed. Although our original back-up plan provided a viable solution for the 150,000 people who were registered, it was met with some confusion over submission procedures and timing. In addition, we have become increasingly concerned that a large number of non-registered respondents plan to submit forms which would inundate the system and greatly diminish your chances of securing a US$19.28 rate.”

However, one failed promotion of X company doesn’t mean that a similar promotion by Y company will fail too. So for what it’s worth, here’s how you can *try* (again) to get £1 rooms at the Hoxton Hotel in London.

Starting October 31, at 12 noon (7am New York Time), 500 £1 and 500 £29 rooms at the Hoxton will be up for grabs on their website. The rooms are available between 1st November 2008 – 31st January 2009.

Last July when the hotel ran this promotion, the 1000 rooms were sold within 11 minutes, so other than being able to book quickly, you’re going to need a large stroke of luck to get one. However, so that it’s fair, you are only allowed to book 1 room for 1 night at £1.

Here’s the link with all the information and a step-by-step guide as to how to avail of this promotion.

(Oh and don’t forget that when local daylight time is about to reach Sunday, 2 November 2008, 02:00:00 clocks in NY are turned backward 1 hour).

Good luck!

Six countries from former Communist Bloc to be granted visa-free travel to US

by Jeffrey White on

If you’ve spent any extended time in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc during the last couple of years you know that one of the biggest gripes people there have had is that while Americans can travel to their countries without a visa, they cannot travel to America without one.

This has irked the likes of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and others even more since they joined the European Union in 2004.

Well, there’s good news in the region today. The US has announced that beginning Nov. 17, citizens of six Central and Eastern European countries will no longer need visas to visit the US.

The countries are: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Hungary.

US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on a visit to Hungary, is quoted by the Associated Press as saying the decision to let these countries into the so-called visa waver program is tantamount to “sweeping away the last dust of the Iron Curtain.”

South Korea will also receive visa-waver status on Nov. 17.

Curiously, Poland didn’t make the cut — which is really going to piss the Poles off, given that they’ve been huge supporters of the US war in Iraq (joining the likes of Albania, Macedonia and Georgia as the US’ fiercest allies in that particular conflict) and have agreed to host a controversial arm of the US missile defense shield.

Perhaps they’ll be rethinking that last one.