Photograph: Beniamino Pisati/Atlantide Phototravel/CorbisĪ package deal was also how we got to Cuba earlier this year on a shoestring budget. Rhiannon stayed in an all-inclusive resort in Cuba but visited Havana, pictured, Cienfuegos and Trinidad. We explained to hotel owner Giorgio (who didn’t give a toss what we did as long as he still got paid) that we would be back him in two weeks, and we set sail for Paros, Antiparos, and Santorini. Malia, with its very own branch of revolving dancefloor nostalgia emporium Reflex, was definitely not our scene (though it should be stated that the old town is beautiful and the shots are free), but we didn’t care because we were off island-hopping. The hotel was appalling, there were stains on the sheets, and the constant pumping of drum and bass from the club next door meant we couldn’t get any sleep. Sensibly, Teletext Holidays then moved online, but a lot of people are unaware that it still exists, let alone that it is as bargainous as it always was.Ī couple of years ago, my boyfriend and I wanted to go to Greece, so snapped up a two-week package to Malia in Crete for about £150 for flights, transfers and hotel. With the latter, you had to sit in front of the television, waiting for the page of neon texted deals to change until the one you fancied appeared. At secondary school, my friend Amy would go on about four package holidays a year, and it was she who introduced me to the website and the glorious institution that is Teletext Holidays. And the deals are often so cheap they cost less than the flight alone would be if booked separately. I accept that the rooms are sometimes a bit naff, but a package holiday is really what you make it. A few years after Cyprus, I went to Zante with my mum and, despite having to wear a sarong the whole time due to an unfortunate case of ringworm, fell in love with Greece. It must have been then that the thought struck me: holiday packages can be an incredible – and affordable - way to get around. I went parasailing, discovered pineapple juice, killed it (or imagined I did) on the karaoke and, most amazingly, got the boat to Egypt to see Tutankhamun’s death mask and the Pyramids. Then, when I was 12, my dreams came true – a holiday to Cyprus with my dad, courtesy of the trauma wrought by parental separation. I used to get them from travel agents on the high street and hoard them at home, spending hours flicking through them as I selected my perfect package holiday (always in the hotel with the most extensive and elaborate waterslide system). As a result, holiday brochures were like crack to me. Every summer, all my friends would go on package holidays to Spain and would come back bronzed and with brightly-coloured hair braids, speaking with worldly authority about paella and knowing all the words to Whigfield. We just didn’t have the money, and my brother is autistic so doesn’t travel well. Rhiannon snapped up a two-week package to Malia, Crete, for about £150. Two weeks on a Greek island for £150 including flights? Don’t mind if I do. The sort of people who rent cottages in Cornwall or large houses in the south of France are always asking me, in a slightly snide way, when I’m off on another one of my Teletext jaunts. There’s certainly a class element to these negative perceptions. As a result, the humble package holiday, which revolutionised foreign travel for millions of Brits in the 1960s and 70s, has become somewhat unfashionable and seen as, to use a horrible word,“common”. But my god, it is cheap.īudget airlines and accommodation websites such as Airbnb have transformed the way we travel. Granted, there’s nothing particularly edgy or intrepid about a taking a Thomas Cook flight, hopping on an airport transfer bus, and washing down an all-you-can-eat buffet with a pina colada, followed by a fag on a sun lounger. Bargains excite me, so naturally I love a package holiday, and go on at least two a year, usually from Teletext holidays, a website with which I have been having an obsessive affair for several years now. There’s a certain type of person who is snobby about package holidays.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |