Bargains on Ireland, China and River Cruises

Travelzoo http://www.travelzoo.com  is offering some unusual bargains for fall travel. For example, a six night trip to Ireland including air fare, hotels and a rental car goes for as little as $999 Canadian. The hotels are in small towns, providing an authentic taste of Irish life outside the capital. For an extra $99 you can add breakfast, which is likely to be a feast.

Having your own car makes it easy to explore off the beaten path, but remember that in Ireland you drive on the left, which can take getting used to. The low rate applies on certain dates in November and December.

A visit to China is an even better deal, eight nights for $698 Canadian including air from Toronto or Vancouver, internal travel and sightseeing, and luxury hotel with breakfast and five lunches. Visa fees and mandatory gratuities add an additional $225.

If river cruises are your preference, certain week long cruises in Europe from October through December are deeply discounted, to $999 U.S. per week per person. Taxes will add around another $200 per person, and air fare is not included.  However, all your meals and sightseeing while on the ship are part of the deal.

Book soon to get these great rates.

Blog or Ad?

The other day I came across a Facebook post about a blog that mentioned five tips for enjoying Paris on a budget. Had to read about my favourite topic and one of my favourite cities. Boy, was I disappointed.

The first three suggestions were okay, the usual advice about using public transit and sticking to the daily menu (menu du jour) in restaurants, preferably restaurants in non-touristy parts of town. I would have added that ethnic restaurants often offer better value than French ones.

However, the last two tips could have been written by an ad agency for a certain financial institution that I will not name. This is an increasing problem with travel blogs, the fact that they are sponsored or accept ads and therefore don't even pretend to be unbiased.

I'm not travelling or posting as much as I would like to at the moment, but with this blog you can rest assured that I do not accept ads or sponsorships. You may not agree with my advice, but it is as close to unbiased as I can make it. And if in future that changes, I'll let you know.

GUM at Night

This attractive late 19th century shopping mall right on Red Square in Moscow is decorated with lights at night. There aren't many bargains to be found there, but I did pick up some reproductions of old Soviet propaganda posters at a souvenir and book shop. And there is a good, inexpensive cafeteria on the top floor.

Peterhof

Peterhof, the summer palace of Peter the Great, is one of my favourite places in the beautiful city of St. Petersburg, Russia.

It's not far from downtown, and is a pleasant excursion from the city since it is surrounded by a large park and has lots of these fantastic fountains. If you are spending some time in Peter, as I did one summer, it is a good place to escape the traffic and noise of the city.

The best way to approach the palace is the way Peter the Great did, by water. There is a hydrofoil that serves Peterhof regularly in summer from the Embankment beside the Hermitage.

Decor in the Moscow Metro

Moscow's Metro has some of the most interesting decor of any such system in the world, and you can view it for just the price of a Metro ticket, around a dollar for a single ticket. The picture above is from Novoslobodskaya Station. Other stations with amazing decor include Komsomolskaya, Mayakovskaya, and Ploshchad Revolyutsii. All these are among the oldest and busiest stations in central Moscow, so if you want to photograph them without hordes of people, go early on weekend mornings.

Komsomol refers to the former youth organization of the Communist Party, Mayakovsky was one of the most famous Soviet-era poets, and the last in the above list refers, naturally, to the 1917 revolution. I haven't been able to determine the origin of "Novoslobodskaya" yet.



If you can't make it as far as Moscow, Montreal's Metro also has some interesting stations. I like the Berri-UQAM station downtown, with its mural on the history of the city. It's especially appropriate this year, our city's 375th anniversary and Canada's 150th birthday. Unfortunately tickets cost more here, $3.25 Canadian for a single ride.

Gethsemani Monastery

Gethsemani Monastery, near Peroslavl-Zalessky, Russia.

Assumption Cathedral, St. Sergius Monastery, Sergiev Posad

This beautiful cathedral is, I believe, the church where some of the action takes place in the film version of John Le Carre's "The Russia House." Sergiev Posad is another of the old Russian cities of the Golden Ring near Moscow, and one of the main pilgrimage sights for Orthodox Russians.

From an old Soviet-era guidebook, I just learned that St. Sergius is buried in another church of this monastery, in a silver sarcophagus that was donated by Ivan the Terrible. On another visit, a guide said that "Terrible" is a mistranslation of the word "grozny," which also means troubled or stressed. Interesting that Grozny is the name of the capital of Chechnya, which has certainly been troubled but has now, from what I have read, been mostly rebuilt.