Barcelona: where history and culture meets the Nou
By: Robin | May 17, 2013 – 6:00 am | No Comment

Robin Nowacki combines culture and cuisine with football on a visit to Barcelona – the capital of the Catalonian region of Spain

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Travel tips & opinions »

Travel in the internet age
By: The Editor | May 18, 2013 – 8:57 am | No Comment

and who uses old fashioned screens any more?

Apparently it is twenty years since the formation of the world wide web. The changes in our lives have been astonishing and none more so in travel.

Go back before it started and we replied to small ads in the newspapers when we wanted to book a hotel, a guest house or a B&B. As soon as Boxing Day came, people trooped into travel agents to arm themselves with bulky travel brochures. I remember visiting a family and there would be a pile of brochures a foot high next to an armchair. Their evenings would be spent leafing through them to decide where to go. Once a short list was compiled a bookshop was visited to get the guidebooks. Back to the travel agency with a final decision as soon as possible and to make sure we could get the place we wanted before others did. The biggest concern was whether the pictures in the brochure matched what the place was really like.

Fast forward to today and we don’t flood the travel agents. We can see what they offer by just finding their website. We can get into the tourist destination websites and see videos of where we plan to go. Hotel sites show us room images, how far we are from locations and provide interactive maps so that we can see where we will be. And we can book online if we want picking flights that suit us rather than accepting what we are told. Don’t want to go from Saturday till Saturday? It’s less of an issue than it once was.

There are no piles of brochures around anymore but for some reason, guide books still are popular despite the fact they are out-of-date almost as soon as they appear. We can book hire-cars, excursions and restaurants before we go. And check in advance what others might think of them but that’s a different story. The only thing that hasn’t changed has been the problems getting there. Planes and airports are still the same necessary evils in going on holiday.

CD-Traveller would have been printed and available from WH Smith at a price. Today it is online and free. Our deadline for publication is about a second before we go live instead of a month ahead of a print date.

The travel industry grabbed the possibilities offered by the web with both hands and so did visitors. In a film called Perfect Strangers made in 1945 the mousy wife played by Deborah Kerr used to dream of far-away places beyond the garden wall and where they might go on holiday if life ever made it possible instead of a week in some genteel seaside resort. She collected brochures from Thomas Cook (was there another travel agent in those days?) so not much changed in nearly fifty years.

But in the last twenty, the world has become closer. We can see before we travel using real-time cams. What will the next twenty years bring?

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Remembering our navy
By: The Editor | May 17, 2013 – 7:40 am | No Comment
Remembering our navy

Yesterday I was down in Portsmouth. Co-incidentally HMS Ark Royal was being positioned by tugs at a wharf before it is taken from Portsmouth for the very last time and cut up for scrap.

The attractions of food festivals
By: Cathrene | May 16, 2013 – 2:17 pm | No Comment
The attractions of food festivals

One of the great TV successes of the last year has been the Great British Bake-Off and it was a cookery book that was the best seller last year. Does the same appeal extend to us visiting food festivals and food shows? Do these events attract us for days-out? Take the largest which will be held this weekend in Knutsford, Cheshire at Tatton Park.

Train fares: Con or confusion?
By: Adrian | May 16, 2013 – 7:11 am | No Comment
Train fares: Con or confusion?

Does some masochist calculate train fares spending days in locked-up windowless, tea-deprived cells trying to calculate these unfathomable things? Many moons ago, did I dream that some government minister or another potential human say that the huge array of fares would be simplified or was that wishful thinking?

Conning air passengers
By: Adrian | May 15, 2013 – 6:48 am | No Comment
Conning air passengers

The kings of extracting money in additional charges have to be the airlines. EU rules have altered some of the ways such as banning add-on prices behind very low fares but more needs to be done. Some add-ons can be avoided and others can’t

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Conning cruise passengers
By: Adrian | May 14, 2013 – 6:18 am | No Comment
Conning cruise passengers

One of the attractions of going on a cruise has been the fact that it often looks like a cheap holiday. This needn’t be true because cruise companies have developed their own ways or rifling your pockets for that odd £100 or so.

Conning travellers
By: Adrian | May 13, 2013 – 8:16 am | No Comment
Conning travellers

Over the years, CD-Traveller has considered the problem of review sites. I had no idea that a company could set up 40,000 different addresses to use. And where one company exists there must be others. All working with companies to deceive us.

Off to a New York summer
By: The Editor | May 12, 2013 – 5:11 am | No Comment
Off to a New York summer

Never slow in grabbing headlines or sending out press releases, NYC and Company – the tourism marketing arm for New York City – is now specifically targeting us to visit the Big Apple this summer.

Remembering the Dambusters
By: The Editor | May 11, 2013 – 10:57 am | No Comment
Remembering the Dambusters

Next Thursday is the seventieth anniversary of the Dambusters raid on three dams in the Ruhr district of Germany. There are celebratory events taking place throughout England during the next ten days or so.

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Prudent travelling
By: The Editor | May 10, 2013 – 6:47 am | No Comment
Prudent travelling

Yesterday’s headline story in Metro and other publications about the unfortunate lady who travelled to Madagascar as a part of a charity exercise and then came down with a tape worm in the brain with life-threatening implications produced an eye-catching story.

The racing pensioner and the battle-scarred veteran
By: Adrian | May 9, 2013 – 2:00 pm | No Comment
The racing pensioner and the battle-scarred veteran

The announcement by the Heritage Lottery Fund of £68 million in support of just six projects today gives an indication of how important these are. Usually many more than six are allotted funds and few are allotted as much as has been given today.

Hitch and the Commodore
By: The Editor | May 9, 2013 – 5:59 am | No Comment
Hitch and the Commodore

The title of this story sounds like a film doesn’t it? And this is a story where tourism meets the appeal of the cinema.

Looking down on the world
By: Adrian | May 8, 2013 – 5:49 am | No Comment
Looking down on the world

The Spinnaker tower in Portsmouth gives a panoramic view of the landscape below. That bland statement does no justice at all to the views you get from the viewing area, the café or the crow’s nest situated some 110 metres above the ground.

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ABBA: The Museum
By: The Editor | May 7, 2013 – 5:22 am | No Comment
ABBA: The Museum

Today’s the day that the museum devoted to the Swedish group opens on an island called Djurgaarden in Stockholm.

Roman El Jem
By: Adrian | May 6, 2013 – 5:54 am | No Comment
Roman El Jem

In the last few weeks you will have seen television adverts for Tunisia. Wherever they go, at some stage visitors will hear of excursions to El Jem home to one of the largest Roman amphitheatres in the world.

Birdlistening… the new birdwatching?
By: Wendy | May 5, 2013 – 5:44 am | No Comment
Birdlistening… the new birdwatching?

It’s a brave person that wakes me up before 6am. Yet I’ve found myself wide awake well before my alarm clock this last week or so, thanks to a couple of perky songbirds perched right outside my window and singing their hearts out

Enjoying the bank holiday weekend
By: The Editor | May 4, 2013 – 7:59 am | No Comment
Enjoying the bank holiday weekend

It is bank holiday time and millions of us will take to the roads to visit attractions throughout our countries. The main reason must be due to the good weather, weather that a week or so ago we thought we wouldn’t see soon.

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French tourism in the night
By: The Editor | May 3, 2013 – 8:10 am | No Comment
French tourism in the night

Reims CathedralIn our countries there is a time of the year when museums stay open at night and visitors see places in a completely new light. But in France there is the opportunity to see museums, churches and other heritage sites thoughout the summer bathed in lights or just open to view.
Two years ago, Frederic [...]

More airport capacity
By: Adrian | May 2, 2013 – 5:32 am | No Comment
More airport capacity

Readers living outside London and the south east of England can turn away now for the debate on whether there is enough airport capacity in the south east has taken another turn.

The importance of being a visitor
By: The Editor | May 1, 2013 – 5:23 pm | No Comment
The importance of being a visitor

In the last two years, a third of all new jobs created in our countries have been in tourism. 2.6 million of us work in tourism. Which is one reason why when Visit Britain launches its strategy document for attracting more visitors, it pays for us to listen.

What’s hot: May 2013
By: The Editor | May 1, 2013 – 6:00 am | No Comment
What’s hot: May 2013

CD-Traveller has the low-down on what’s hot in the travel world, right now

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Cordoba courtyards
By: The Editor | May 1, 2013 – 5:51 am | No Comment
Cordoba courtyards

Every year in May, the city of Cordoba in Andalusia celebrates its famous Courtyards Festival, a tradition in which many of the courtyards or “patios” in the historic quarter are open to visitors for a few days.

Queen’s Day
By: Adrian | April 30, 2013 – 8:18 am | No Comment
Queen’s Day

Today is a public holiday in the Netherlands. It is Queen’s Day. If you though the Brits could make pageantry and the monarchy a big tourist draw then watch the events in the Netherlands!

Win a pair of Heat Holders socks!
By: The Editor | April 30, 2013 – 6:46 am | No Comment
Win a pair of Heat Holders socks!

We have five pairs of Heat Holders socks – loved by the likes of former five time Olympic skier turned TV presenter, adventurer and journalist, Graham Bell – up for grabs!

The lure of the fossil
By: Cathrene | April 29, 2013 – 6:51 pm | No Comment
The lure of the fossil

The annual Lyme Regis Fossil Festival draws crowds of up to 14,000 every year to meet with other enthusiastic amateurs as well as experts. Coming up this bank holiday weekend is the 2013 Fossil Festival.

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Congratulations to all the Olivier award winners
By: The Editor | April 29, 2013 – 9:40 am | No Comment
Congratulations to all the Olivier award winners

The winners of the most prestigious event in the UK theatrical calendar, the 37th Olivier Awards with MasterCard, were announced last night at a glamorous ceremony at London’s Royal Opera House

Exploring Easter Ross
By: Adrian | April 29, 2013 – 6:17 am | No Comment
Exploring Easter Ross

Adrian continues his train journey from Thurso to Inverness, is surprised at the lack of visitors and has trouble with Gaelic

Virginia celebrates spring with new giant love works
By: The Editor | April 29, 2013 – 6:00 am | No Comment
Virginia celebrates spring with new giant love works

LOVE really is in the air in America’s Capital Region this spring, as Virginia celebrates the many reasons to fall for the Virginia’s fascinating landmarks, historic towns and breathtaking countryside with 16 new giant “LOVEwork” artworks and installations

Bosnia and Herzegovina event highlights
By: The Editor | April 28, 2013 – 4:00 pm | No Comment
Bosnia and Herzegovina event highlights

Bosnia and Herzegovina is home to a thriving programme of events, with something to attract every kind of visitor