Photo of the Week – London Architecture

Roomorama – An accommodation tool for the global traveller

In the past I’ve always professed my love for backpacker hostels. They’re cheap, provide a social atmosphere, and are a good place for a solo backpacker to meet other people, but a hostel is not for everyone…. There are a lot of people out there who think the idea of sharing a dorm room with a bunch of people they’ve never met is not what they want from their travels! I completely understand. One type of accommodation definitely does not suit all.

So how do you travel on a budget around the world without staying in a hostel? Hotels can be expensive, and even if you would consider a backpacker hostel, what if they’re all full in the location that you want? What if it’s a country like the USA which doesn’t have a culture of backpacker hostels, and therefore you are unlikely to find one where you are? What if you are travelling as a group or a couple, and paying prices by the bed instead of by the room will make a hostel more expensive?

There are always occasions when we need alternatives in life. Having more choices allows us to make the best decisions to suit ourselves and what is best for our travels. For those people who may have asked themselves the questions above, or don’t necessarily fit the hosteling budget backpacker mould, then you may be interested to hear about Roomorama.

A variety of destinations to choose from worldwide

One of the things which I think positions Roomorama well for catering to the RTW (Round The World) backpacker is that they have such a large variety of properties listed around the world. Whether you want to stay in Buenos Aires or near Buckingham Palace, near a beach, in a country retreat, or in a big city location, there is a lot of variety to choose from.

Prices to suit most budgets

I recently spent 5 nights in London using a room I found on Roomorama. London in particular offered prices for a little as 25 GBP per night for a room outside the metro area, to as much as 975 GBP per night for a plush 3 bedroom apartment in the middle of Mayfair.

The place I stayed at was in Zone 2 near East Acton station, and only cost 42 GBP per night. It was clean, had cable TV, private bathroom, private kitchen facilities, and a free basic breakfast each morning. I had everything I needed in a central location at an affordable price. I am also just 1 person. The room was able to accommodate 2 people. If you are staying somewhere like I was then you could potentially pay just 21 GBP per night sharing with another person. I thought this was a really good deal for such an accessible location of London, albeit off season.

(Please note: Roomorama gave me a credit to use for the purpose of this review, i.e. I stayed for free. Like any review I do on here, be it my 1 month Inter Rail journey, or my tour of Scotland with Haggis Adventures, I am always honest. I would genuinely use Roomorama as a customer in the future.)

5 Things You Should Know About Scotland (Before You Come!)

5 things you should know about Scotland before you visit our shores are:

• Never call a kilt a skirt in Scotland
• Never refer to Scotland as England
• Unpredictable weather – rain, snow, sunshine, and wind all in one days is normal
• We like to drink a lot of alcahol. We did invent whisky afterall…
• We officially have the worst national diet in Europe… but it does taste gooooood!

Watch the video above for more info and to have a laugh at me on my 1st real video blog!

Changing my travel style…

One of the things I love about travel is that there are so many different styles to choose from. Some even over lap, and many are much more specific than just the loosely termed backpacker or luxury traveller. You have long term travellers, business travellers, digital nomads, flashpackers, budget backpackers, WWOOFers, volunteers, eco-travellers, country & continent specific travellers… The list goes on! There are also those who don’t like to be labelled (which I can understand), and those who like to travel in a different style depending on the occasion or how the mood strikes. Everybody is different, and usually a combination of many styles, not just one. Sometimes your style is simply defined by your budget.

For me, I’ve always very much been a long term budget backpacker. Even back when I was a student, when I may not have had the money to go away as often as I would have liked… Every trip I planned was long term, aimed at making my money last as long as possible. It didn’t matter necessarily how much money there was in the pot. It could be 100 dollars or a million dollars… I’d still be staying in backpacker hostels and looking for ways to make the money last as long a time as possible. If it lasted a week then that was because it was all I could afford. It it lasted a year then it was under the same principle.

The style that I describe above is not going to change much for me in the future. I will still be staying predominantly in budget backpacker hostels, and still making long term plans. This is how I like travelling. However, a lot of my trips of late, despite lasting several months in total, they often revolve around going to a lot of destinations within a reasonably short period of time. This means that although I’m a long term traveller in terms of the physical months of travel under my belt, I’ve actually not staying a very long time in each destination. This is something I want to change.

I visited 17 countries last year in 10 months. 16 of those countries were squashed into 6 months of travel, while the other 4 months I spent in Spain just hanging out, eating tapas, and trying to learn some Spanish. I went to some incredibly unique and inspiring destinations in that 6 months out of Spain such as Bucharest and Belgrade to name a few… but you know what? The best times I had were actually in Spain.

It was all to do with the people I met. I had an instant connection with these people, but more importantly, I actually stayed there long enough to strike up real friendships with them. That may sounds silly to some people, but I’ve been missing something in my life since I started travelling long-term and that is a base. A real base, with a home, and a network of friends who will miss me when I’m gone. People who really know me, and who when I come back months later it feels like only yesterday.

I began to think about all the places I’ve been to on my travels, and the ones which I always looked back on most fondly. They were all destinations I’d stayed in for at least one month, sometimes much longer than that. All the 2 day or 1 week destinations were almost forgotten. In fact, for a while I’d forgotten I’d been to Luxembourg. A beautiful city/country, and a place I enjoyed, but I was only there 2 days. How can you get to know a place and people in 2 days? The answer is quite simply – you can’t.

So I’m changing my travel style to revolve around a base. I may change bases every couple months, or have one place I base myself permanently while I hop around… I don’t know yet. That base may even be home in Scotland or in another city around the world. All I know is this constant chopping and changing every few days and weeks is not how I want to travel anymore. I don’t think it was ever how I wanted to travel, it’s just something I ended up doing.

Slow travel is the way for me…

A bed on a bus… megabus sleeper service review

When I first heard about the Megabus sleeper service I must say I was intrigued. I’ve always preferred train travel to coach travel in the past. It’s usually more comfortable, particularly where night journeys are concerned. However, if a night bus service could provide a bed like they do in sleeper trains, then it could certainly compete! Especially if they were able to keep the prices down and lower than a typical train journey to/from the same destinations.

So what is it like? A bed on a bus you say!

I should first point out that Megabus are currently trialling this sleeper service between Glasgow and London. Things may change in the future. However based on my own experience over this trial period I found there to be both upsides and downsides for the traveller who decides to use this service.

I slept for 6 hours straight on the bus. For someone like me who finds it hard to sleep on night buses, this was certainly an improvement. There was lots of length to the bed, i.e. leg room, the beds are designed well to keep the light out, and the pillow and quilt was thick and warm. You also have little added extras like a socket for your laptop or phone, a bed light, and a croissant & orange juice in the morning.

With each bed that is allocated you are also allocated a seat at the back of the bus too. It’s just like the seat you would get on a regular coach service. This means if you want to sit up and read a book with the light on you can do so without waking anybody up! The only major downside is that it is impossible to sit up on the beds, and I can only assume this is why they have had to allocate seats too. There is very little height room. Even just lifting your head to try and turn sides was hard. On my return I found that there was more height room in the top bunks due to the extra curve on the roof of the bus, so my advice to anyone taking this service would be to ask for a top bunk.

What about price?

Megabus very kindly offered me my return trip for free for the purpose of this review, however, had I purchased this trip ordinarily it would have cost me 40 GBP each way. Considering you save a night on accommodation and you get a bed I think this is a very good price.

Comparatively to a regular night bus service with Megabus, i.e. where you just get a seat and no bed, you’re paying around 25 GBP more per journey. Personally I think this is worth the extra money for one journey as getting a good sleep is so much easier on the sleeper service than is is sat in a seated position with limited leg room next to someone on a bus for 6 or 7 hours.

What most people will probably be interested in however is the price in comparison to a typical rail sleeper service for the same journey. If I was to book a sleeper service with national rail for Friday 28th Jan, it would cost me 120 GBP. This is considerably more than what it costs for a Megabus journey. That being said, if you book well enough in advance by rail, and travel on selected promotional deals, then I have seen similar journeys advertised in the past by rail for as little as 16 GBP. Equally, I’ve also seen Megabus put on promotional deals for their sleeper service at 1 GBP a bed! I’m therefore not going to go by promotional offers as these might not be available when you attempt to book. Instead I’m going to take the average price for journeys from Glasgow to London, and for a one way ticket by rail it usually costs around 60 – 70 GBP at a few weeks notice. Based on this you’d make a saving of around 20 – 30 GBP on a Megabus sleeper service compared to the average sleeper rail journey of the same distance.

What I like about the Megabus service in general compared to rail travel is that prices tend to stay relatively low. With rail travel it can yo yo greatly, and you really have to book well in advance to get a good price. With Megabus, or coach travel in general it’s much more suited to the budget traveller who doesn’t like too far ahead, who likes to keep their plans flexible.

Service

I found the Megabus staff to be very friendly and helpful, and never experienced any problems on either of my journeys.

- If you want to book the sleeper service with Megabus between Glasgow and London and try it for yourself, then you can head over to their UK site www.megabus.co.uk and make a booking.

The week I had no blog…

Last week I went to log onto my website just like I have done everyday for the past 2 years. Instead of the usual screen displaying my website’s homepage however, I got the page that appears when you’ve lost your internet connection. My eyes looked down to the corner of my computer screen to see 5 full bars of connectivity. I opened another browser, and up came the Google homepage. The internet was clearly working. I flicked back to my site, refreshed the browser, and still the same screen was staring right back at me. Hmm… what’s going on here then?

Despite all my travels around the world of late, changing country, scenery, and accommodation most days of the week, my one sense of routine has belonged to my travel blog. Sure, I may decide to start writing at 4am some nights, and midday on others because that’s when the creativity strikes. Yet regardless of what I do, when I wake up, or where I go, the first thing I do every morning is check my blog stats. If ever there is a slight interruption to that I must admit, I do feel a little out of place. So when I woke up that morning to find that my website wasn’t working, I started to panic a little. The response from my host company made me panic further!

Me: “Why is my website down? Is there a problem with the server?” Host Company: “ No, it just takes a few days for new domains to propagate.” Me: “What do you mean by new domains? My site is 2 years old!” Host Company: “Umm… really? That’s not what it says here?” That’s not an exact word for word of my conversation with my Host Company, but it’s pretty much the gist of it.

My host company didn’t understand what was going on or how to fix it. In the end they told me to leave it 48 hours and see what happens. I wasn’t willing to do that. Eventually they did some tests and said “The server is fine. You need to speak to the company who registered your domain.” Me: “Isn’t my domain registered with you??”. Host Company: “No.”

As it turns out, back when I first started this website I was very briefly with another company called One.com. After a few weeks I transferred to Hostgator because at the time I didn’t know much about Word Press, and they offered an automatic install. Put it down to stupidity or a lack of knowledge on my part, but I was under the impression that if I registered & hosed my domain with one company, when I switched, that registration & hosting service would go to the next company. Apparently it didn’t. Only the hosting did. I paid 3 years in advance, and thought that was me paying to register my domain for 3 years too… but it wasn’t. Long story short, my domain name registration remained with the old company. It then expired in Jan 2012, and because I no longer hosted my site with them they failed to send me a reminder. As a result I was left to find out one day when the domain expired and I woke up to no site.

Like I said, this is partly my fault. I didn’t know a lot about websites when I first started out, and everything I know now is completely self taught, learned along the way. However, I must say the company that I am currently with (Hostgator) really weren’t a great deal of help, and I do not recommend them to anyone! I had to figure out what was wrong and tell them what to do. They also continually gave me random dates of when the problem would be resolved, to which it was never resolved by This also wasn’t the last of my problems…

Apparently because One.com only offer joint hosting and registration packages, this meant I couldn’t just simply renew RunwayJane.com as my website name. I had to transfer it and make payment with Host Gator. Transfers typically take up to 5 – 7 working days. Not only had my site been down for 2 days already by this point… it could potentially be the following week before I’d have it up and running again! At this point I felt I was really feeling the frustration. Never before had I been without my blog, and all my stats were on a nose dive as a result of the blackout.

In the end I just had to try to be patient, and play the waiting game. For someone as passionate about their travel blog as me, this was particularly frustrating. It also made me realise how fragile my whole business is with how much it relies on one site as a platform to make money. I guess I got the wake up call I needed to expand into generating separate sources of income! I also realised more than ever how important my blog is to me.

— So if you were trying to view the site over the past 7 days then this is what happened. I am very pleased to say that everything is back up and running, and I am blogging to you once again! I am also sorry if you couldn’t access any content or advice that you wanted to on the site during this time. As a result of a week offline Runaway Jane is has lost it’s page rank, and the RSS subscribers have greatly decreased. If you feel like sharing any content on this site via your social networks or doing a link exchange with your travel blog should you have one, it would be much appreciated! As always I’m happy to share any of your content in return should you have a blog! Also, if you were an RSS subscriber who couldn’t access content last week, please do subscribe again to the feed. Everything is well and truly resolved, and you can access content normally!