Europe A La Carte Blog

Welcome to my blog, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I’m delighted to announce the 5 panelists for the live blog “How to get more from your Euro” on Tuesday 20 May 2008 at 20:00 BST. I asked the panelists to email me an introduction to themselves and their blogs which I’ve listed in alphabetical order of their first names.

Christopher Cook currently lives in Tallahassee Fl where he received his second Masters Degree from FSU. As an avid traveler he maintains a new budget travel blog, www.noambit.com in the hopes of inspiring others to just get out there and see Europe. He has lived and studied in Tübingen Germany and travels as much as possible each year to cities throughout Europe. His writing has appeared on thetraverag.com, vagabondish and bravenewtraveler.

Greetings everyone! My name is Hilary and I currently live in Berlin, Germany. My blog, LessThan a Shoestring, illustrates how to get the most for your meager travel budget. Fed up with “budget” travel advice from journalists with too much money to spend ($500 is too easy!), I decided to write instead for those with no (or little) money, showing that it is possible to travel well for $10-20/day. Between news, sample budgets and other travel advice, I serve up weekly travel-related freebies and host the Travel on a Shoestring Carnival, which gathers the best blog posts on budget travel and rotates weekly to different areas of the globe.

Lisa Marie Mercer is the editor of flyaway-weblog.com your first stop to budget travel. She writes the Snow Goddess blog and is the author of Open Your Hear with Winter Fitness. Lisa Lives in Summit County, Colorado. When she’s not skiing, writing or teaching fitness, she and her husband use his business travel frequent flyer miles to hop the globe.

Hi, I’m Sean O’Neill, senior editor of BudgetTravel.com, the website of Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine. Our blog is called This Just In and our magazine’s editors regularly post newsy, practical tips, along with trip ideas. We aim to help middle class Americans who have real-world travel budgets. In a world where luxury advertisers define much travel coverage, we’re fighting an uphill battle–though our magazine was recently nominated for a national magazine award for general excellence–the US magazine world’s equivalent of “best picture Oscar”. Anyway, for the next two months, BudgetTravel.com is running a series Affordable Europe offering tips on how to make Europe more affordable. The series is mainly driven by freelancers in Italy, Paris, and Rome.

I’m Tom Meyers from www.eurocheapo.com. EuroCheapo is a guide to budget travel throughout Europe, and publishes a daily blog about practical ways to save money while traveling.

Euro Travellers are looking to squeeze more value from their Euro when travelling in Euro Zone in Europe which includes most of the major destinations such as France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Ireland. In order to help you get more from your euro Europe a la Carte has lined up some great panelists to give you some advice and insider information. You don’t need any special equipment to join in, just come to this post on Tuesday 20 May at 20:00 British Summer Time, (you can check the time in your zone here). So please come along and join in. I’m sure that you will have some hot tips for Euro Travellers too and/or would like to ask the panelists some questions.

The 5 panelists are:

Christopher Cook of www.noambit.com

Lisa Marie Mercer of flyaway-weblog.com

Hilary of Less Than a Shoestring

Sean O’Neill of This Just In

Tom Meyers of www.eurocheapo.com

You can read more about the panelist in this post.

You’re invited to tonight’s live blog featuring 5 travel blogger panelists discussing “What readers want from a travel blog”. You just need to come to this post at 8pm British Summer Time, which is one hour in advance of Greenwich Mean Time (here’s a link to check the time in your time zone). The console below will go live and you can follow the discussion and make comments or pose questions to the panelist. You can read about the panelists below.

I’m Karen Bryan, creator of the Europe a la Carte blog, hosting tonight’s event. I’ll be moderating tonight’s live blog. My travel business Europe a la Carte features authentic travel in Europe on a modest budget. I started a blog for my travel business in October 2006. I try to make my posts useful, informative and entertaining for readers who want to see more of the real Europe, beyond the well worn tourist track. I recently started as the editor of Wandalust a UK travel blog.

I’ve listed the panelist in alphabetical order of their first names. I asked the panelists to email my their own introduction.

David Stanley is the author of Moon Handbooks South Pacific, Moon Fiji, and Moon Tahiti, published by Avalon Travel Publishing of Berkeley, California. His South Pacific travel blog is intended to provide updates to his printed guidebooks and to discuss issues of interest to Pacific travelers.

Gil Zeimer is an accomplished travel writer, advertising wordsmith and globetrotter. His true passion is his role as lead editor/writer of www.Vagablond.com, a luxury travel blog focusing on travel, food, wine and shopping. Since the site’s launch in April 2005, Gil has crafted over 1,325 stories and acted as catalyst for Vagablond’s position as the online resource for luxury travel with highly entertaining content.

Hi, my name is Jeanne from Soultravelers3. We are 20 months into an open ended, multi-year trip around the world as a family on a tight budget & we blog/vlog about our adventures and collaborate with other readers, travelers, teachers, schools, and homeschoolers around the world. We retired early and also share how-to information about that, mobile global living, e-education & homeschooling while traveling, budget family travel and RVing in Europe and world wide. This year we are excited about bringing a few classrooms of disadvantaged children in NYC and Chicago along with us virtually!

I’m Sebastien Tobler, I believe that my blog Colliding Continents offers a true travelers perspective that strays from the beaten path. I think that my experiences around the world can help people find a more qualitative approach to traveling. Having lived in a significant amount of countries throughout my life I find that there are ways to better assimilate with the cultures you live in/are visiting instead of maintaining an outsider’s perspective.

Tom Meyers is the founder and the Editor-in-Chief of EuroCheapo.com. EuroCheapo’s mission is to make travelers’ time in Europe affordable and memorable. EuroCheapo’s editors have scoured Europe’s most popular cities to find hotels that are both welcoming and wallet-friendly. The hotels EuroCheapo recommends are perfect places to settle in for a few days while exploring cities, interacting with locals and learning about the places you’re visiting. EuroCheapo’s budget travel blog includes daily posts containing advice and insider information for saving money while traveling. The EuroCheapo blog focuses on areas that are most likely to impact travel budgets, including hotels, budget airlines and alternative transportation options, and the occasional restaurant recommendation.

Our recent live blog using Coveritlive was certainly an interesting experience. However after reflection and feedback I’ve come to some conclusions.

1 Publicise the live blog well, ensuring all publicity has correct time and working links.

2 Explain how a live blog works, that a screen will display within the blog post at the start time and you don’t need any special software or technical knowledge to make comments. Although participation is encouraged, there’s no pressure, you can just read the ongoing discussion.

3 Double check that the live blog is live on the blog post once you launch the live blog.

4 Introduce yourself and your co-producers and panelists and the topic of the live blog.

5 Have one person (producer) responsible for moderating comments who only allows relevant comments. Better fewer comments than irrelevant comments which can lead the discussion off topic.

6 Have at least one producer and one panelist with knowledge of the topic briefed and ready to do live chat and then even if you don’t get any comments there will be an interesting discussion, which stays on topic, for viewers to watch which may encourage viewers to participate.

7 If producers and/or panelists need to communicate over the progress of the live blog, don’t communicate through live blog use some other form of live messaging.

Live blogging can easily degenerate either in to chaos or a empty space if you’re not well prepared for the event.

Do you have any tips to add to help other live bloggers pull off a successful event?

Booking travel online can be confusing and complicated. Darren of Travel Rants and I will be co-hosting a live blog on Thursday evening to discuss the online travel booking experience. We’d love your input, whether you are a consumer, a travel company who take bookings online or a designer of online travel booking systems.

When I booked my flight from Glasgow to Berlin on the Easyjet site, I just wanted to book a flight but I had to go down a long list of options e.g. travel insurance, speedy boarding etc.

My worst online booking experience was when I tried to book accommodation in Fuerteventura on the On the Beach site. I entered my credit card details and nothing happened, no confirmation or message saying my card details had been entered incorrectly. I entered my details again and still nothing. At this stage I began to panic slightly, thinking what if I’ve booked the accommodation twice. I phoned On the Beach and they said they couldn’t help me over the phone I’d need to wait for an reply by email. I emailed On the Beach and 24 hours later they got back to me to say that they had no record of my booking, They was no apology, no explanation or no offer to take my booking over the telephone.

Would you like to show me around the hidden gems where you live? It could be anything - street art, an urban or rural walk, a characterful pub, an interesting museum or exhibition. I’d like to highlight just how much there is to do and see in the UK once you venture, even slightly off the beaten track. I plan to travel around the UK with locals showing me around their home turf. I’ll be writing blog posts during my trip, posting photos and podcasts.

There’s been a lot of verbal support during British Tourism week for domestic tourism from high profile figures such as MPs. I’m asking them to practise what they preach and volunteer to be my guides in their local area.

I’m also looking for sponsors for the tour.