Holiday Reviews

This category is where you’ll find a selection of package holiday reviews (mainly mine right now, but hopefully those of others when the site takes off a bit). I want this section to provide inspiration for places to go and see, so the reviews are reasonably detailed. You might also want to check out the holiday deals & ideas too for more, erm, ideas! Incidentally, you can leave comments on these holidays, so if you have been to one of the places reviewed, please feel free to add your thoughts…anything that will be helpful to others.

I’ve been to Amsterdam three times in the past three years and am starting to get a pretty good feel for the place. Each time I’ve booked a package through LastMinute.com and stayed in a different hotel, although one change was only because my preferred hotel was fully booked. I’ll be honest and say that my visits weren’t strictly for holidays as they were to attend conventions, however the sort of convention I go to, you might just as well call it a holiday as it’s all laid on LOL.

I’ll come back to the hotels in a bit, but first, Amsterdam itself. I would call myself a fan, although it’s the sort of city where IMO you have to be a bit choosy about the times you go. It’s got a very relaxed atmosphere, perhaps not quite to Paris levels, but nonetheless it’s chilled and the layout of the city means it’s difficult to get lost as all roads tend to curve in an arc Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, my girlfriend and I decided that we’d like to go to one of the Greek Islands for some sun - last minute holidays are typically “us“ and this was no exception. Now both of us have been before…we’ve both done Rhodes and Skiathos, and she’s also been to Crete and the Greek Mainland but this time we wanted somewhere fairly quiet and relaxing, although we are restricted to going during the school holidays so naturally there’s a challenge there! As usual, finding a good deal and suitable destination involved plenty of Interweb wandering and - one of the reasons I started up this site actually - inspiration for some reason always seems to be in short supply. Sure, there are some great cheap deals out there, but none of the travel booking websites seem to tell you what the place is really like.

You know the score - the deal is great but the blurb that accompanies it is all about how wonderful the place is, how amazing the hotel is blah, blah, but it doesn’t tell you that your room looks out over the waste bins, or that 25 guests went down with food poisoning in July. Or that the Island is a protected environment for Waspus Stingus Humungous. And the Greek Islands do have Read the rest of this entry »

The second visit to the Maldives (with my current girlfriend) we did things a little differently, but had an equally fantastic time in a slightly more “natural” habitat on Asdu Sun Island which is an hour speed-boat ride from Malé airport. Asdu is different to Kanuhura in several ways - it’s less “purpose built” and more basic/informal, plenty of trees in a more natural habitat and a smaller Island all round - without the 5* touches, but much more of that “middle of nowhere” feeling which is, I have to say, fantastic. You sit on the white sandy beach during the day looking out at….nothing! Not a thing in sight. Robinson Crusoe this is! You can walk right round the Island in, ooh, 10 minutes, it’s that small. It only had around 25 guest rooms, a central restaurant, and being dive-oriented, is quiet during the day because they all sail out to the reef to, well “dive” I guess! Not that it will ever get busy with so few rooms!

It’s a more rustic feeling, basic yet very clean rooms, but it’s also a very cheap holiday by Maldives standards. We did this Read the rest of this entry »

Sometime back in the 80’s, when I was a mere youngster, before the days of this amazing Interweb thingy, I remember seeing an advert in a glossy magazine for a place called the Maldives. It was what has now become the sterotypical picture of paradise - the palm tree, white beach, glistening blue lagoon and the distant outline of a small Island - and I remember thinking “one day, I’m GOING to go there!” The trouble is of course, the pics in the brochure are always touched up, taken from the “right angle” and generally the best possible advert…the real thing never lives up to the image.

Or so I thought. When I returned from my first trip to the Maldives in 2001, my answer to people who asked what it was like was “it’s the only place I’ve ever been where the reality is better than the pictures!”. Which is probably why I went back again in 2006 and will be going back again in the next 2 years, and probably again after that (repeat to fade). I’m not normally one to go back to the same place more than twice in quick succession, but the Maldives is definitely the exception Read the rest of this entry »

Time to start sharing the successful package holidays I’ve had in recent times in the hope that it might inspire one or two of you to try them out. I’m going to start with a bit of history, and a holiday that I wasn’t 100% sure would be “me”, but turned out to be among the best 3 holidays I ever had. Welcome to….Luxor!

That’s in Egypt if you didn’t know. About half-way down and a hot place! We actually chose a fantastic time to go - the week directly before Christmas. This was great for two reasons: firstly the temperature was a bearable 29/30 degrees (high 80’s Fahrenheit) and when we got back, we were straight into Xmas with no time to moan about the UK weather. What amused us was on one trip, our (excellent) Egyptian guide was wearing a scarf and long, thick overcoat and the temperature was pushing 30 degrees celcius!

We booked the holiday through Thomas Cook and the whole trip - 7 nights accommodation in the 5* Luxor Hilton plus flights cost us a mere £249 each ($450). Without food admittedly, but the food is so cheap Read the rest of this entry »