tourism

What are they thinking?

Cyprus Mail reports that Cyprus Airways expands its operations in Greece:

“After the positive response from the Athens-Thessalonica-Athens route, the airline decided to start new regular flights to the country’s most important airports,” CY announced yesterday.

Starting on October 28, there will be twice-daily flights between Athens and Heraklion, one from Athens to Rhodes and back; one a day between Heraklion and Thessalonica and another between Rhodes and Thessalonica three times a week.

My first reaction after reading this is – what are they thinking? Cyprus Airways has been in a lot of financial troubles lately, getting lots of help from the Cyprus government, including the kick out of the competition – Ryanair (here and here). But at least Ryanair was working with Cyprus, bringing lots of people in and out. What does Cyprus Airways do? Yeah, right, instead of trying to help the Cyprus tourism a bit, they go to Greece. Which, given Greece’s troubles, is questionable as well. What’s the point of having Cyprus Airways in Cyprus at all then? And why does the government spend the money on them. Let them go to the other side of the world, if they want to, and help Australia’s tourism, or something…

Four nights in Tel Aviv, Israel

As some of you know, last week I spent a few days in Tel Aviv, Israel. It wasn’t my typical trip – vacation or technical conference. I was there for business. And I wasn’t there alone, but with a colleague of mine. That trip was the first of a kind for me.

One of the things that was very different is how prepared I was. Usually, I try to read and learn as much as I can about the place I am about to visit. I also plan a bit on where I want to go and what I want to see. But this time, I didn’t know that I’m going until the last minute. And I didn’t know how much time I’ll have for sightseeing. And I was busy. So I read absolutely nothing. Zip. Nada. And maybe that was for the better – I could see around me with a fresh eye.

Continue reading Four nights in Tel Aviv, Israel

TripAdviser can be confusing

I’ve heard plenty of good things about the TripAdvisor website. I’ve never used it myself yet, but I know that a few people that I trust with reviews do. Today, I was searching for information on a restaurant and Google suggested that I check out this TripAdvisor page. Looks good, doesn’t it? Here is a screenshot of it, just in case it will change in the future.

Reviews, ratings, and even photos – that is all very useful. But I needed more. Given that I had no idea where exactly the restaurant was, I thought the most helpful details would be the address or at least a phone number. A link with “More restaurant details” only told me that I’d need a reservation. But again, no information on how to actually make the reservation.

Without that basic info, the rest is pretty much useless. Gladly, that’s not the only website on the Internet. This one seems to have both the address and the phone number…

Frankfurt and Karlsruhe photos

In November 2009 I went for a PHP conference in Karlsruhe, Germany. I’ve also visited Frankfurt briefly. As with most of my travels, I’ve shot a whole bunch of pictures. But unlike my other travel pictures, these ones were waiting for post-processing for way too long. Yesterday I abandoned the hope of ever editing them and started to upload them as-is. Maybe one day I’ll be back to level the horizons, crop, resize, and correct colours. Until then, I’m too scared they will just get lost.

I’ve organized these images into two separate sets: Frankfurt and Karlsruhe.

I’m too lazy to dig through my archives, but I’ve probably mentioned a few times that I enjoyed myself over there, that I like travelling through Germany, and that that PHP conference was a blast. And if you don’t believe me, you can always ask Chris and Michael who accompanied me on that trip.