Spendthrift Shoestring

A French Half-Secret: Gîtes

For almost a decade now I've traveled as often as possible. This has meant, in most circumstances, that I've traveled on a serious budget, becoming a connoisseur of many varieties of cheap bed along the way.

I'm always marveling at the existence of cheap accommodations that tend to fly under the international radar—types of accommodation used by locals that don't manage to attract a lot of press. I've written about the Dutch bungalow park phenomenon several times, a few years ago here. Bungalow parks can be an extremely inexpensive way to have a rural or beach holiday in the Netherlands, yet they receive very little coverage outside of the Netherlands, and virtually none in North America.

I've known about France's gîtes for years, but it took my recent trek through Martinique and Guadeloupe to really hit home how amazingly budget-friendly they are. Gîtes take many forms. Some are simple rooms with kitchen facilities. Many function more or less as bed and breakfasts. Some gîtes are spare rooms in apartments and others are free-standing structures. Gîte owners are required to live on the premises or near-by. There are pricey gîtes as well as inexpensive ones, though what stands out is the great value offered by so many gîtes. Even in otherwise expensive regions, gîtes tend to be much cheaper than hotels.

Country road. Marie-Galante, Guadeloupe.

It was on Marie-Galante that the money-saving value of gîtes really jumped out at me. Gîtes dramatically outnumber traditional hotels on Marie-Galante, where there are scores of gîtes with nightly rates in the €40-€50 range. The island's embarrassment of gîtes is fitting. With its uncrowded beaches and relaxed, bucolic vibe, Marie-Galante is an independent traveler's dream.

Check out Gîtes de France as well as Simply Gîtes and Gite.com for listings and information. 

Some Signage from the French Antilles

Coulda, woulda, shoulda.
Campaign poster from last year's presidential election.
Le Bourg, Terre-de-Haut, Guadeloupe.

 

Love that domain extension.
Air France poster.
Aimé Césaire Airport, Fort-de-France, Martinique.

Great tiles, too.
Address marker.
Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe.

But when is it open?
Illegible post office hours sign.
Beauséjour, La Désirade, Guadeloupe.

SkyEurope's February

In comparison to Ryanair's performance in February, SkyEurope this past month saw greater increases in passengers numbers and greater declines in load factor. All in all, it was a very dramatic month for the Slovak low-cost carrier. SkyEurope managed a very impressive 25.5 percent spike in passengers in February 2008 against February 2007 stats. Less impressive—in fact, mind-dizzyingly so—was their load factor drop of 18.1 percent, from last February's very strong 85.3 percent to this February's tepid 67.2 percent.

The airline attributes this free-fall of a drop to a huge increase in seat capacity and "a focus on continuous yield growth." Fair enough, though these are hardly the sorts of goals that axiomatically trigger load factor decline.

I'm not shy about the fact that I'm a fan of SkyEurope. I hope that these numbers don't scare investors and analysts. I'm crossing my fingers that the airline will continue to hone its product and deepen its route map to include more underserved airports in Central and Eastern Europe. Profitably, of course.

Ryanair's Mixed Numbers & Proofreading Difficulties

Ryanair just announced their February performance numbers. The airline claims a 20 percent rise in passenger numbers in February 2008 against February 2007 numbers, and a two percent drop in load factor in February against last February's stats. Load factor, or the number of passengers as a proportion of the number of seats available to passengers, was at 75 percent in February.

Last year at this time Ryanair posted a passenger increase of 24 percent and a load factor decrease of one percent, both against February 2006 numbers. If anything, there's a slight downward drift here, though nothing approaching a dramatic trend.

I hate to venture into snarky territory, but Ryanair could really stand to proofread a bit more diligently. It's February, not Frebruary.

As soon as some other European low-cost carriers publish their February 2008 numbers, I'll write about them.

Various: A Short List

Today I'm finding myself easily distracted from the work at hand. Nothing new about that, but I thought I'd try to give my associative paralysis a shape by jotting down what is on my mind.

1. London. Matt and I are headed to London in late spring and summer. For months now I've been developing a list of neighborhoods, restaurants, commercial districts, bars, museums, and specialty markets in London, all of which I plan to visit and blog about with the determination that comes from the knowledge that eight weeks is an all-too-short block of time. I probably shouldn't admit this, but Time Out's 1000 Things To Do in London has been wonderfully suggestive. It's full of free (and cheap) activity ideas.

2. Something to write in. Last summer in Barcelona, I bought a set of Astrid Stavro notebooks for La Central. Each notebook in the set is lined with a different form of punctuation. They're beautiful and delicate.

3. Regional travel. I'm trying to fight my instinct to view London as a launching pad to places like Istanbul and Riga and instead focus on the British Isles (Devon, Cornwall, the Channel Islands, Wales) and other near-by places (West Flanders, Brussels, Lille.) In recent years, Europe has been a place I've traversed hurriedly in the interest of time. My second-most recent European adventure involved an Athens-Vienna train/air hopscotch followed by a triangular jaunt from Barcelona to Valencia to Madrid; the most recent one split up nine days between Calabria, Amsterdam, and Friesland. These itineraries were perfect for me, but I'm curious to see what might happen when I can actually rely on a major European city as a base and thus curb the instinct to travel far and wide.

4. EasyJet's new routes. Fares on several of the routes easyJet has taken over from GB Airways are hardly cheap. The London Gatwick-Paphos fares, though in keeping with comparable fares on Thompsonfly and Monarch, are quite pricey. Case in point: a Gatwick-Paphos roundtrip in mid-August, using easyJet's lowest fare finder, comes to £256.98. Perhaps this is just a function of the terrifying exchange rate, but over 250 quid doesn't seem like a low-cost fare to me.

5. LCC reconsolidation. It looks as if Centralwings may be the first low-cost airline casualty of 2008. Thanks to AirScoop for the tip. 

Eurovision 2008: Slovenia!

As far as this year's Eurovision songs go, it's still early days. About three-quarters of this year's 43 songs have been selected, and I've only heard about half of these.

My early favorite is "Vrag naj vzame" by Slovenia's Rebeka Dremelj. Slovenia doesn't have a great track record at Eurovision, but I'm hopeful that they'll do well this year. (For that matter, I have a poor track record at Eurovision. My faves have tended to crash and burn in recent years.) It would be exciting to see an ex-Yugoslav country take the reins from Serbia. And gosh I'd love to have another excuse to run around Ljubljana for a few days.

And the song? It's a tried-and-true exercise that starts out midtempo and then gets disco-y. It's well-done pop well-suited for Eurovision season. Check it out. I will admit that I'm hoping they work on the choreography before May.

Check out ESC Today and Schlagerblog for news and impassioned snark, respectively, on all matters Eurovision.