whys it so hard to search for a holiday in the sun??

looking to get away early june, somewhere hot, turkey, greece, cyprus, canaries…..who knows? £300ish pp all inclusive, maybe less if theres any good deals?

googling away, yet all the sites only give you one area of one country at a time to search on, you find thats no good so have to start all over again >-(

are there any sites that let you just put in the dates, couple of airports youd go from, and do a sort of pot luck/show me anything you got type thing?
we really dont know all the different areas of turkey for instance, so dont know which to search for.

also any recommendations from the above places? or are they all much of a muchness if you just want ‘hot’, a beach, nearby waterpark would be nice, you know the sort of thing……
i say all inclusive, but if the local food was cheap enough we’d go half board or something too.

thanks 🙂

Turkey would be my choice – loads to see and do, food is also (usually !!) scrummy, fresh and cheap so b&b/room only would suffice 8)

Are you nice people? We’ve a spare room in our Barbados villa….

😀

#make mental not to befriend Kryton

After years of trying to book holidays on line, thinking it would be easier and cheaper, we went down to the small local travel agents and they sorted us out really quickly and cheaply.

Internet is not always the best way, who d’ thunk it.

Expects lots of let down by LTA threads 🙂

Cheap and hot (no beach but an outdoor pool not too far away, free tapas in the nice village and buses into Grananda)

http://www.alhamaaccommodation.com/casa_navidad.html

Booking.com? We almost always use them, and then book flights and a car on the net. Saves about £250 – £400 for a week for two people…

Are you nice people? We’ve a spare room in our Barbados villa….

we’re lovely yes 😀 but couldnt afford flights there, let alone food and living costs. thanks a lot tho 🙂

Turkey would be my choice – loads to see and do, food is also (usually !!) scrummy, fresh and cheap so b&b/room only would suffice

yeah, thats what we’re concentrating on, any particular areas?

After years of trying to book holidays on line, thinking it would be easier and cheaper, we went down to the small local travel agents and they sorted us out really quickly and cheaply.

yeah, thats worth a shot thanks

Booking.com? We almost always use them, and then book flights and a car on the net. Saves about £250 – £400 for a week for two people…

ill go have a look, thanks for the tip.

mackem, was that your review?

thanks

+1 for using a local independent travel agent.After building our own holidays for the last 7years or so – flights, hotels, transfers etc and getting thoroughly hacked off with spending weeks worth of evenings searching for the best/cheapest deals and then having charge upon hidden charge added on, this year we decided to go to the travel agents. 3/4 of an hour and 2 cups of tea later our holiday was booked with sound advice and at a price at least as cheap as I could of found it on t’internet.
Definitely the only way I’ll be booking from now on.

Kryton, location, please!

We should talk!……

If you’re just after a standard package deal then the method here is pretty good. Teletext and Icelolly websites usually have plenty of suggestions and you can be as vague or specific as you want about location/price/date/airport criteria.

Holiday in the sun you say?

And TripAdvisor for checking out local restaurants when you’re there. Found a cracking restaurant in Chania last week thanks to TA (Zepo’s, in case you happen to be there or planning to be. Ela is fantastic too)

We had a great week in Marmaris over Easter. Grand Yazicki Mares hotel booked through Thomas Cook. Very early for Turkey so lots of hotels and bars not open yet, and Icmeler a ghost town. All Inclusive. Main hotel nice, but chalet/bungalow rooms a bit shabby. Food fantastic and service great. At opposite end of bay from Marina, Bar Street and Market, but only ten minutes in a cab or forty minutes walk. Beach not fantastic, lots of man made and jetties, but private sections for hotel. Lots of stuff to do once the season gets in the swing. Booked through TC shop after giving up chasing internet options, only booked 9 days before going as we got sick of the cold.

mrs expunk seems to be concentrating on looking at turkey, which seems to tie in with some of the suggestions above. a quick google shows olu deniz to have a lovely lagoon beach. i know nowt about the different resorts tho.

any recommendations? is there a rowdy resort to avoid? nice quiet resort?
mlc, ill have a look at marmaris too. thanks

EDIT: also if you go SC, do you get a bigger room with oven, fridge, kettle etc so you can buy local and cook when you like? or would you be expected to eat out still?

If you just want to chill out then perhaps Kefalonia is worth a look.

Kefalonia is nice. There’s no ‘antiquities’ though, because everything was destroyed in a big earthquake in the 1940s. Hire a scooter for 10 euros a day or so and have a tour round. Thassos is nice for a week, too. my fave though, is Stoupa, on the Peloponnese. Nothing to do but eat drink and walk…..

Olu Deniz in Turkey was my resort of choice until I moved to Spain.We used to stop at the resort hotel-all inclusive but not cheap.

After years of trying to book holidays on line, thinking it would be easier and cheaper, we went down to the small local travel agents and they sorted us out really quickly and cheaply.

This! We just used our local independent travel agent, and they were brilliant. They found us a nice hotel and now we don’t have the stress of wondering if we’ve made the best possible choice: we just have to turn up and enjoy it.

I went to olu deniz a few years ago and really liked it. The lagoon was nice and there were a few nice bars on the front. Much worse places to end up.

We have stayed in Icmeler, and walked down to Marmaris one day along the sea front. It was like something from that Benidorm program. We turned round & went straight back…was a bit ‘Brit abroad’ for us.

Icmeler was busy, but not too rowdy. This was several years ago.

We have also been to Calis Beach, which is a lot quieter and a more relaxed resort. Nice beach and good for chilling out.

The area around Side is also nice.

Probably gonna try Olu Deniz next time we go to Turkey. Should probably try some other places, but the people are really friendly, the weather is great, the food is good and it’s reasonably priced. We keep ending up going back to Turkey.

Olu Deniz is a fine place to relax but tends to get very busy and can be a bit exclusive/pricey.. Good though, you might get a deal ??
Id head along the coast, past Bodrum and onto the peninsular – Gundogan sort of way. Probably not as developed as you might like but was a cool place to chill out !
Wherever you decide to look try to get slightly out of town, transport is never a problem in the bigger towns and eat locally – alus good fresh food .
TBH …. Anywhere on the south coast would be great for a week or 2 of sun ..

OH – Avoid Gumbet = Blackpool

CFH – 3 bedroom house nr Bridgetown currently, all air con etc etc pm me if interested.

Oludeniz you say…………you want to stay here Sea breeze[/url]

Its up the hill from the town, and away from the strip, but close enough to both

CFH – it’s Britton hill, st Michael.

Got agree still can’t beat going into the travel agents, they give you a price ask them if it can be any better and they usually knock more off. Talk to them very nicely they’ll even use their staff discount for you, saved us about an extra 15% in total last year which was about £450.

just having a look at that hotel steve thanks. looks like we can get 2 double rooms or a 2 room apartment for £370ish with booking.com.
never booked this way before, so what else would we need to sort if we booked those rooms? just flights, or flights, transfers, pretty much everything apart from the room?

havent looked at flights yet, but may work out too expensive once theyre factored in plus food etc.

thanks

EDIT: ive contacted 3 local independent travel agents this morning, none of them got back to me yet.

Don’t bother with food on the plane. Most people can survive a few hours without eating anything. Or pick something up in the airport. There’s usually a Boots selling sandwiches at high street prices.

As for places to go in Turkey, if it were me, I would avoid Marmaris and Olu Denis. Both can be very busy. Kalkan and Dalyan were very nice when I was last there – 10 years ago, but I expect they will have changed now. Dalyan was slightly in-land, but a lovely 30 – 40 minute river boat ride down to the beach.

We’ve spent a lot of time in Turkey over the years; back-packing and nosing around, so feel free to ask away.

try somewhere like lowcostholidays.com or onthebeach for a search. You can usually put in a month you want to go and it comes back with suggestions without being too specific.

When we went there we booked flights, and I think the hotel sorted out the transfers for us for a fee, I think £20pp which was reasonable as Oludeniz isa fairdistance from the airport (Dalaman).

If you do go to Turkey then you dont want to go All Inclusive, everything there is so cheap. We were going out for nice 3 course meals with wine every evening and it was working out about £10 per head.

Lykia World just on the edge of Oludeniz is a fantastic hotel although you may struggle to get a room in your price range – not impossible though!

We have always used http://www.teletextholidays.co.uk/ and find the search options quite flexable ie search Turkey Best Sellers.

Hope you find the holiday you are looking for.

thanks, been seeing whether we could get owt for the ‘sea breeze’ but seems to be monarch that fly there from birmingham, and too much for us.

lykia looks lovely, but waaay too much. coming out nearly £3000 for us 😯

stiiiiiiiilll looking 😀

thanks

local travel agents havent come up with anything to shout about really…..
southern spain (costa almaria?) for over a grand, 4 of us self catering, £324pp half board.
tunisia at £376pp all inclusive, also zakynthos self catering for around a grand.

dont think we could afford the total costs of any of those. is tunisia worth a shout over turkey at all if its a bit cheaper?

just updating, we went into town today and booked tsilivi in zante, through ilkeston co-op travel agents.

had to go self catering to be able to afford it, but we’re looking forward to actually going out and seeing what we can get locally, rather than the canteen-like all inclusive for a change.

thanks a lot for all your advice, and if anyone knows this resort, id be interested in any recommendations or advice.

cheers 🙂