Economies and Expenses to Budget For When Travelling

Hiking - cheap or expensive?

Is hiking a cheap holiday? It can be. 

But, to be safe, you might need outdoor clothing, food, drink, maps, phone and charger. 

Plus the climbing or hiking clothes, and gear such as poles, ropes, boots, torches, maps, GPS devices.

The big cost can be flights and connecting flights. Within Europe you have Ryanair. For example, from Stansted.

Also, budget for the cost of taking a car into a National Park (not a car park, but a tree and wildlife park).

Sticks - cost, design and check-in 

A stick for climbing rough grounds has a tip, which must be covered on aircraft. 

A walking stick for city walking has a flat rubber base, which may be allowed on some planes, or can be packed if it folds. You may need to buy a stick with points, or a pair of sticks, at the destination.

UK costs: driving

Toll on the bridge into Wales.

Parking costs at hotels, and visiting museums.

If no parking in city centre restaurant areas, you may need to budget for taxis. 

If drinking or wine tasting, you may need a taxi back to your hotel.

Europe - driving

Toll roads in France.

USA Parks and vehicles

In the USA and many countries, entry costs at entrances of national parks for pedestrians and vehicles.

ASIA - costs

India required my family, who were holders of British passports, to buy visas. 

Nepal cost cutters

A cheap country such as Nepal has cheap food. 

However, you may have to pay a hefty fee for the permit to climb e.g. Everest. Also the cost of a guide. And porters to take tents and cooking equipment and food for the entire trip. Allow not only the time of the climb but any hike to base camp, and time to acclimatize. 

Camping Costs - Research, Money, Time, Planning, Experience

 Our son practised camping by putting up a tent in our garden. 

Some people run in their shoes or boots. 

My husband spent more than the cost of a night in a hotel, and a taxi to a hotel, on buying a tent, and a  on a sleeping bag, bag liner, hiking boots, torch and most of the contents of the camping shop website.

Home Swap Advantages

We did a home swap with a family in the Channel Islands. We saved on accommodation.

Home Swap Challenges

We had to pay our fare to get there and back, plus our foods and entertainment at the destination. But we saved on accommodation.

Packing for a holiday takes time. But clearing your house for a family of four to move in takes longer.  You must clear space.

You need to pack away valuables. We had to leave new matching crockery in sets of four.

Hotel Extra Charges

Parking

You might have to pay for car parking outside the hotel, Or pay for use of the hotel's garage. Or pay for valet parking.

Some airports have introduced drop-off charges.

Extras At Hotels & Restaurants

A five star hotel might also charge for service, taxes.

Incidental extras might be phone calls. 

Watch out for cover charges. Service charges. tourist taxes. State taxes vary around the USA, and are added when items are posted from one state to another.

Drinks - Extras

Also drinks, water. Also watch out for the mini bar contents. 

Drinks Included

Many buffets have free sparkling wine, Italian Prosecco, Spanish Cava, or French Champagne, at either breakfast, or evening dinner, or both. But they might not tell you. Have a look or ask if it is included.

Find out the cost of an upgrade to a room whose cost entitles you to use of a Club Lounge or private breakfast room with a fancy name. If they run all day or intermittent food and drink, this could save you paying extra for water and wine with meals. Or for coffee and tea and cakes mid-morning and tea time. Apart from the cost, it is a time saver.

Spas, Saunas - Time and Money

The indoor pool might be within a spa which charges residents as well as outside non-resident guests.

Hotel Extras Included

Some hotels have free swimming pools with spar baths, or complete spa centres with saunas, and steam rooms.

In the Canary Islands we had a free indoor pool at the Parador in Tenerife. They closed early, 6 pm. The same applied to the outdoor pool at the Parador hotel on La Palma, which closed at 5 pm in their off-season June 2026, although later the next month.

On Tenerife the outdoor pool was free, included in our room and breakfast package. We were given one free session in the indoor spa which had lovely massaging pools and water jets. We were there two days, but did not get a free session for each day, just one free session to tempt us to make further bookings.

Some ask payment per hour rather than the whole stay free, or paying for one day.

Souvenirs and Supplementary Bags

You may buy souvenir clothing, books or bulky items, or bring back leaflets. You might need to buy another suitcase, and to pay the airline for extra bags or bulky or heavy luggage.

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Kosher Food And Booking Passover Flights, Hotels and Seder Night Meals When Travelling

Kosher Food For Passover And Seder Nights
In Singapore I booked a Friday night meal at a synagogue. They did not take money on the Sabbath so I had to pay in advance. Sometimes the solution is to make a donation by arriving before Sabbath starts, and putting it into a donation box.

Early arrangements are even more essential for communal Seder nights worldwide. One solution is to book a kosher meal at a synagogue, a kosher hotel, a ship offering kosher food, or go to Israel to visit family friends, or a hotel there. If you are planing to travel at Easter or Passover, like Christmas and Chinese New Year in Asia, you are likely to find flights are full and you need to book early to get a seat at a good price, or to get a seat at all.

Israel
One year I went to Israel and found a Jewish friend who had a relative. After a flurry of correspondence I was invited for a Seder night.

Gifts
If you are looking for a gift, online shops are full of gifts suitable for special occasions. For an engaged or married couple, you can even get an embroidered cover with the first names of the man and woman.

In addition to Israel, you might find kosher foods in many other countries, including the USA, UK and South Africa and Australia. Where there are smaller communities, you could check with a synagogue or a free publication in a kosher shop. Look for advertisements in newspaper in areas with Jewish populations.

Photo from Pretoria Travel in Wikipedia article on kosher food.

With Eurovision in Israel after Netta's win with the song Toy, expect renewed interest in travel to Israel.

Useful websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_foods

https://www.amazon.co.uk

visitbritain.com
visittheusa.co.uk
visitbritain.shop.com
visitsingapore.com
www.lonelyplanet.com/Australia
https://new.goisrael.com/
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have many more posts on Kosher food, Israel, food worldwide. Please share links to your favourite posts.

When Are Easter And Passover And How Might This Affect My Travels?

Card from St John's Ambulance - with a request for a donation.

Problem
When are Easter and Passover?

Easter Sunday in 2018 is April 1st. How will it affect you?

Driving
In London, England, you should find less traffic on the suburban roads during the morning and evening rush hours because parents are not driving their children to school.

Main roads out of London and into London are likely to be busy at the start and end of Easter as people head out of London to holiday resorts, such as Devon and Cornwall.

Stately homes and national trust properties which had closed for winter or had reduced opening hours will now be open later.

Clocks in the USA went forward on March 11th in the USA, and in the UK on the last Sunday in March, so more daylight hours for driving and enjoying the outdoors in the evening.

Flying - Passover
Flights are busy during and just before the Easter and Passover periods, especially to Israel for Passover, although there may be extra flights. Hotels will be offering special meals and special packages involving accommodation and meals, so expect more crowds and entertainment, higher prices and some places fully booked.

Restaurants

Shopping
Shops and supermarkets in the UK feature a lot of flowers and chocolate, especially traditional English chocolates in boxes and Easter eggs. The chocolate boxes will be reduced after Easter.

Morrisons has just delivered homes in the London area notices about their Passover range in stores from 12th March to 3rd April 2018. Goods include:

Chopped herring
Chopped liver
Chrayne (or chrain) horseradish when white, purple when beetroot is added
Falafel
Fish Balls
Grape juice
Ground almonds
Ground walnuts - that's something I don't often see
Houmous
Matzos (crackers)

The leaflet says Happy Passover and Chag Pesach Sameach. Chag Sameah translates as happy holidays.

Flowers
Flower prices will go up at Easter and come down afterwards. You will already find flowers in gardens in London, England, yellow daffodils and white ones and narcissi.

Daffodil from garden in London, England. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Walking Around London
Just walking around London is a pleasure in March when the spring flowers are out. The trees are starting to grow their buds and blosssoms. A visitor from France told us: "I had no idea that London and England were so pretty and full of flowers!'

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_greetings
https://www.duolingo.com/course/he/en/Learn-Hebrew-Online

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

How to learn to read and write Cyrillic, Russian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian

Problem
How do I remember the Cyrillic alphabet?
How long will it take?

Answers
If the alphabet is 26 letters long, and you learn a letter every day, in one month you will have mastered it - forever!

If some of the letters are the same, that makes it easier. You simply revise the previous days' letters on days when a new letter is the same at the Latin (English) alphabet.

If some of the letters are the same, you will do it in two or three weeks.

If you are doing nothing one day this weekend, you could learn four letters an hour, over seven hours, 4 x 7 = 28, with revision at the end.

Story
A relative of mine learned Russian in one term at a boys' grammar school. I think every school should do this. Or offer it as an after school option.

Tips
Learn words you can recognize and remember. For example, the title of the Russian newspaper PRAVDA, which means truth.

The English P is the Russian bridge sign, or Pie in mathematics. The r is written as p. The a is the same. The English V is a B. The D is a delta. I think of it as the door to a tent. The final a is again a.

правда 

Remember:
Look at it three times:

правда 

правда 

правда 

Today's Russian letter:
Day one. Letter one.
A is the same in Russian and English.

Tips
www.duolingo.com
https://lp.babbel.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script

You will need it in:

National script of:
 Belarus
 Bosnia and Herzegovina (mostly in Serb inhabited parts of the country)
 Bulgaria
 Kazakhstan
 Kyrgyzstan
 Macedonia
 Mongolia (also Mongolian Script)
 Montenegro (also Latin)
 Russia
 Serbia (also Latin)
 Tajikistan
 Ukraine
(see Languages using Cyrillic)

To fly to these countries check the national and budget airlines:
http://www.aeroflot.com/ru-en (Russian)
www.bulgaria-air.co.uk/
ryanair.com
https://www.cheapflights.co.uk/find-flights/to-Ukraine
If Cyrillic is too hard, try Romania which used the Latin alphabet.
www.tarom (Budget airline to Romania.)
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and languages.
Please share my posts.

Learning Ukrainian - First steps

Problem
Ukrainian is in the Cyrillic script like Russian.
How do I learn the letters?
How do I type them?
How do I recognise and remember Ukrainian words?

Answers
I searched on the internet for a website with a Ukrainian keyboard and found yluhovy.com

UKRAINIAN KEYBOARD
With the help of a family member I downloaded the ap and found keyboard on my laptop and installed it. I now have the Ukrainian flag symbol in the list of flags which coma up as options in a drop down box when I clock on the UK flag for British English keyboard.

So far, so good. But how do I know which letter on my keyboard to type to get the Ukrainian equivalent.

My first thought was to type the English alphabet. But I didn't know what the Ukrainian equivalents were, nor where to find them.

QWERTY
So I typed out querty, the top line of my UK keyboard.

The only trouble was I had just clicked on the Ukrainian, so I got all the Ukrainian letters first, then the English keyboard.

My first thought was to type the Ukrainian letters followed by the English not he same line.

However, typing the Ukrainian underneath the Qwerty, or above, made comparison of one letter and another easier for learning easier. It was also easier to find the equivalent letter to type it.

I looked at the three lines and thought that was too many letters together and too muddling for my eyes. So I typed it again, larger, with the three keyboard lines separated by a space.

I printed it out, intending to cut out the largest version and stick it only my laptop.

Display
If you don't want to deface your laptop, you could make yourself an upright card, or even a card the size of a business card and display it in a business card holder, or the top of a business card box.

Now it is easy to see which letters are identical: Most of the vowels: aeio .

A few consonants: KXM.

Some letters are almost the same.

wш

mм

бb

тt

Story
I want to visit Ukraine because my late father's grandfather came from Ukraine and I am writing a novel inspired by research into my family history, based on the city of Lemberg, as it was known under the Austro-Hungarian empire. The city of Lemberg is also known as Lvov or Lviv.

Tips

Ukrainian - English
The Ukrainian word for son looks like sin, but spelled with a C to start. C pronounced S the same as in the English words place and p a l a c e and p o l i c e . The son who sins.

The Ukrainian word for garden looks like sad, starting with the letter c for sad. The garden is sad.

The word for juice looks like sick, shortened to SIK, starting with the letter c for S.   The juice is sick or made me sick.

Not very pretty pictures, but effective in teaching me to recognize and remember the words and the letters.

More Tips On Languages
www.duolingo.com

Video on numbers:
https://www.linguajunkie.com/learn-bulgarian

Flights to Ukraine
https://www.cheapflights.co.uk/find-flights/to-Ukraine/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have many more posts and tips on learning languages, also travels to Cambodia, Italy, Romania, the UK, USA and the world. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Installing keyboards in Cyrillic and other alphabets

Bulgaria

Problem
How do you add the accents and letters for other alphabets when giving foreign place names or making lists of words when learning a language?

Answers
I have added to my laptop the keyboards for:
British
Russian
Russian - phonetic
Spanish
ABC - AZERTY
Greek
Italian
Hebrew
Romanian
Polish
Welsh
Pinyin simplified (Chinese)Belgian
Ukrainian

In Word you can have more than one open at once which is really useful if you want to type a column of words in a foreign language and the translations.

Unfortunately on an Apple MacBook Pro I can only find one keyboard at a time. The symbol for the keyboard you are using is the national flag symbol at the top of your screen on the right on my machine.

If you want to install a new keyboard, hunt for one on the internet and follow the instructions.

Tips On Typing Accents
For adding accents, hold down the letter on your keyboard. For example, the letters a  and e, if you hold them down up pops a choice of accents. Depending on how your system works, you either continue holding the vowel key down and tap on the number which appears under or over the accent you want.

In French I find that the most commonly used accents require me to tap on the keys 1 or 2. If you remember which is which accent, you will go faster. If not, tap on one. If that brings up the wrong accent, simple tap on two.

Ukrainian
When I found a Ukrainian keyboard, it required me to locate 'keyboards' on the laptop. When I typed that into the search box I found all the articles I had written which used the word Keyboards.

So I opened a new tab and typed in: how do I find keyboards on a Mac?

I found that by clicking on 'preferences' I found the keyboards symbol.

Cyrillic
The Cyrillic alphabet is the one used by Russian. Is that the same as Bulgarian and Ukrainian. Almost but not quite.

British and American
Think about the alphabet used for English. The letters are the same. But American and British spellings are different. So are some pronunciations.

England and French
The French use the same alphabet but add a few letters with accents. Once you know the alphabet for English it is easier to pick up the alphabet for French (if your first language is Chinese or Russian).

Russian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian
Similarly, you have a head start if you have learned Russian first when adding on a new language such as Bulgarian or Ukrainian.

FLIGHTS

To fly to these countries check the national and budget airlines:
http://www.aeroflot.com/ru-en (Russian)
www.bulgaria-air.co.uk/
ryanair.com
https://www.cheapflights.co.uk/find-flights/to-Ukraine

Tips
More details from
https://www.duolingo.com/comment/17638789 Ukrainian letters and links to pages on verbs. Personal pronouns grammar portal.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/language-linguistics-and-literary-terms/language-and-linguistics/slavic

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have many posts on languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Two Tips on Pronouncing Romanian before your trip

Problem
You can recognize Romanian words on the page, but can't say them. Words such as not, which is nu, or good which is bun, like the French bon, look easy. But when Romanians speak, you can't catch what they are saying.

Answers
I
One reason is that lots of words end with the little I with pointed  hat,

which is the same as an a with the hat

Which is a silent vowel like the e ending the English word vase.

SH!
Sh - don't tell anybody. The letter s with the comma underneath is like the two letters in English, SH. Just think of the comma as the extra letter h which is not pronounced h but chances the s into SH!

I find the easiest way is to learn using Duolingo, the free language learning website. I play the sound of the word by tapping on the sound symbol. If I have time, I play it twice or three times and practise saying it. That's how Romanian children learn to speak their language, by hearing it and repeating it.

Tips
TOURISM & TRAVEL & FLIGHTS
http://romaniatourism.com
https://www.blueairweb.com/company/about-us (Romanian airline, page includes flight query box)
https://www.budgetair.co.uk/flights/europe (They go to Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and many more
https://www.cheapflights.co.uk/find-flights/to-
http://www.lastminute.com/flights/
www.ryanair.com

When I log in from the UK I get companies based in the UK. When I log in from another country, such as Singapore, I get a host from that country. Similarly, you will find a host website in your country.

Sometimes it is cheaper to book flights from another country. This is easy, especially if you have a home of business in another country.  Or you might ask your host company to book the flights for you if they get better bargains and deals, rather than booking for yourself and then claiming back the money from them.

LANGUAGES
https://www.duolingo.com/

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker and language teacher. I teach English, and other languages with a Latin or Cyrillic alphabet. Please share links to posts. 

EU Round Trip travel to 27 countries - air fares

I was sent this email about the cost of travel, by air, to 27 countries in the EU.

"The cost of visiting all 27 EU countries in 27 days, before a possible BREXIT

"22/06/2016, Kiwi.com - Online travel agency Kiwi.com have created a graphic (attached) showing the cost of visiting all 27 EU countries in 27 consecutive days. The epic round trip, which begins in London and lasts nearly 4 weeks, comes with a price tag of just under £1,500. As well as a cost breakdown per fight, the graphic also suggests a unique visitor attraction for each destination.

"Although the £1,500 sum covers only the costs of flights, Kiwi.com also calculated that for a grand sum of £2,800, inner-city travel, food, and the cost of entry to one major attraction would also be possible."

I have a busy day - so no time to research. I'd rather go by train and save the money. But there is a time factor. Driving would also take much longer. We once looked at driving to Lviv on the west of Ukraine. You can race through Belgium and Holland, but other countries take longer.

Got a thousand (pounds) or two or three to spare, and 4 weeks? At least you could write a blog or a book - and up your travel country count.

Who else might do it? You could do the same trip at any time. A honeymoon couple might be keen to visit all their family and friends scattered across Europe. A retired couple might want to sell up and see the world, rather than take hotel accommodation between selling one place and being another. A student with a four week summer holiday, and plenty of cash. A lottery winner. A linguist. A lover.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, photographer, author, speaker.

Learning the Russian Alphabet - easily

Every few years I tell myself I am going to learn the Russian, Greek and Hebrew alphabets. I print them out and look at them for several minutes. I stick one up on the wall. I lose the other two. Whatever success I have, a year later I've forgotten it all. This year will be different.

This year I am learning Russian on Duolingo. I am trying to use the transliteration into a 'sensible' and recognisable alphabet. But every now and then the system plays a trick on me and asks me to translate this - all in goobledegookic.

I decided the only way to learn it was to try to teach it to somebody else. I would head my blog post, easy way to learn Russian. Then I thought, I must print off the alphabet first. I did that.

That's easy. Just go to Wikipedia.

Oddly enough, I could remember the first five letters from somewhere:
alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon ..... Was that from learning Greek, or Hebrew?

At my bible classes at weekends as a child I learned the letters S and SH were like W with a dot above the left line for S and above the right line for Sh.

When you see them written alphabetically it's easy to recognize
gamma and delta,
to spot that after K comes the funny L;
after M comes N but written as H.
After P is S - written as C.
After T is U written like Y.

But when you come across the letters in the middle of words it is harder.

 Then I thought, let's try easy way to learn Russian. Guess what. Ten years ago nobody had done it. Now there are at least three sites. I struck gold, or rather easy cyrillic (same thing) with the first one I tried.

SAME LETTERS
Let's start with the easy letters.
No trouble recognising letters which are the same in English and Russian:
A, K, M, O, T.

B in Russian looks like a small letter , or lower case, b.

C - is C always with as S sound as in city. (Gadling suggests the word cite, perhaps more unusual and memorable, but I am using as my memory aid city, a more usual word.)

GREEK STYLE
Gatling must be American because he uses the terms frat guys and sorority girls. I think that means graduate/undergraduate guys and graduate/undergraduate/college girls. He says they will know four letters, which I presume are used as names for houses or college clubs or university associations.

In England we would be more inclined to say, those of you who have done maths A level will remember the signs for 'pie' and 'phi'.

VISUAL MEMORY AIDS
G
Gamma looks like a capital T with the left side of the horizontal missing.
I made my own visual aid. I drew the right side of the T in heavy ink and very lightly went over it to create the capital G.

R
I took a P and added a faint line to turn in into an R.

P
The squared off arch for the Pi, had the left hand side elongated to make a P.

F
I drew the bold letter F with a circle over the top half.

That's for me or you in a visual mode. If that doesn't work, or needs reinforcing, try a memory aid word.

VERBAL MEMORY AIDS
The Russian P is an R. So I say PR (public relations). PR - P is R.

N
H is N. So I remember HeN. H is N.

U
Y is u/oo. so I remember YoU - y is 'you' or 'u'.

V
B is V so BV Beverley, B is V.

T
Backwards N is T - nit. Backward N is T.

D
Russian D looks like a grand door.

L
I was having trouble with the letter L.
It has a full letter height curve on the left connecting to the Top of a letter I with a tiny link across the top. It looks like a drunk leaning on a lamp post or a dog lifting its leg against a lamp post.

Z
The Russian z looks like a capital 3. Think of three zebras.

I printed off:
http://gadling.com/2009/03/30/gadling -teaches-you-to-read-the-cyrrilic-alphabet-in-5-minutes


I am waiting for the Greek and Hebrew to be finished by DuoLingo before the end of the year, they promise. Then I shall learn the Greek and Hebrew alphabets. (On second thoughts, I don't need to wait. I can learn the alphabets in preparation.

PS

золото

zoloto - gold.

Let me show you what I found. Please Read my other posts.

FLIGHTS

The best way to practise the language is to go to the countries using a foreign alphabet such as Greece, Israel, Russian and many others using the Cyrillic alphabet. I have more posts on Cyrillic. Pick up a bilingual magazine, photograph bilingual items which have to be left on the plane, look for pages with a handy bilingual word list.


To fly to these countries check the national and budget airlines:
http://www.aeroflot.com/ru-en (Russian)
www.budgetair.co.uk
www.bulgaria-air.co.uk/
www.ryanair.com
https://www.cheapflights.co.uk/find-flights/to-Ukraine

If Cyrillic is too hard, try Romania which used the Latin alphabet.
www.tarom (Budget airline to Romania.)
Please follow me and share links to your favourite posts.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, language teacher.