That’ll explain the prices

When I booked this trip I had originally intended on staying in Cadiz rather than Jerez. Partly because I hadn’t looked at how frequent the buses from the airport were (that partly put me off, but I could have changed onto a train in Jerez) and partly because I thought there would probably be plenty of accommodation in Cadiz.

When it came to booking a hotel room I found it was incredibly expensive, heading close to £100 per night for even a one star hotel.

By the time I finally found a hotel with reasonable rates it was the Ibis out the back of Jerez, which appeared to make some sense, as that was the airport I was flying to.

I have, though, now found out the reason for the lack of accommodation.

It’s not that Cadiz is short on hotels; it’s just that it is very short on rooms if you try and book into hotels during the annual Carnival.

If I’d actually looked at a calendar before booking the trip I might have realised (though to be fair, it would normally be in February, it’s only because Easter is so late this year that Carnival is taking place in March)

I’ve obviously started to get a little slapdash with my planning recently, in the past I would have spent weeks planning looking up key dates and comparing lots of days before booking, now I just pick a week and get booked up.

Perhaps it’s time I went back to a bit better planning.

Honest, the blog hasn't been abandoned

14th July - "Of course, this could all be a fad, I'll write a couple of posts on my first couple of days on my next trip and then abandon the blog to rot!"

And so far, I have proved myself right. But, there has been a reason, sort of.

I've been having a big overhaul of the website, getting rid of the rarely visited or difficult to maintain parts and updating much of the mapping on the site.

I've also been hard at work sifting through all my photos from my big trip around Central Europe. In the end I got quite carried away with the camera and took over 2200 images (with the highest "snap-happy" rate happening in Interlaken)

Still, I've sorted through them, and am about to start uploading them to the fotopics site.

I've also been preparing for the remainder of the year, and into 2009 taking advantage of some particularly good deals.

For the first time ever I have been able to get hold of the mythical 1p flight (albeit with over £35 of taxes), for Granada next March, plus a £0.00 flight (plus £35 tax!) to Belfast. Finally, media hungry Travelodge, always bombarding me with e-mails from the couple of times I have booked with them peaked my interest with their sale. Four nights for less than £40 (that's the total for four nights, not the nightly rate!). Though as to what the Scottish/English boarders are going to be like in January could be interesting, but based on the weather this so called summer in the UK I am confidently predicting 32C and glorious wall to wall sunshine (or -6 and trench foot)

Next up, in a couple of weeks in Venice, so if I don't post again before then, it's not because I'm forgetting my Blog, it's just I've got nothing to say at present, and I've always been told, if you haven't got anything to say keep your mouth shu....