EuroCheapo friend Philipp Reichardt pointed us in the direction of L’Tur, a German “last minute” budget travel site.

L’Tur is an impressively detailed site, densely packed with travel deals. It offers a range of booking options: flights, hotels, flight-hotel packages, cruises, car rentals, and even auctions. One downright pleasant aspect of the L’Tur site is its practice of offering complete rates and fares. This means no dismaying discoveries of additional taxes and charges.

What sorts of amazing deals can you expect to find on L’Tur? We found a Munich-Istanbul roundtrip leaving tomorrow evening for €64 and a Düsseldorf-Madrid roundtrip taking off tomorrow afternoon for €74. On the package holiday front, we spied a seven-day package departing Munich on Wednesday for Malaga for just €198, including airfare.

There are versions of L’Tur in German, English, Dutch, French, and Polish.

Popularity: 3% [?]

photograph courtesy of Salvatore88

If you have plans to travel to Italy in August, you might want to think twice about sticking exclusively to the major cities in the north of the country. Many fashion boutiques and restaurants in Milan and Florence will be essentially shut down while Italians are on official holiday. If shuttered retail districts don’t encourage you to flee city for seaside, unpleasant city humidity might do the trick.

Do as the Italians do and head for the remote Aeolian Islands, a cluster of six drop-dead gorgeous volcanic islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The best way to get to the Aeolians is by boat. There are frequent car ferries and much quicker hydrofoils from Milazzo, Naples, Cefulu, Palermo, and Messina to the Aeolian Islands during the summer months.

Popularity: 1% [?]

photograph courtesy of Christopher Coats  

It can be difficult to find the right balance of cheap and delicious in the middle of Ronda, southern Spain’s plateau-set birthplace of bull fighting. With a city center overrun by lousy tourist menus, Ronda’s culinary selection can strike discerning Cheapos as limited.

Hungry budget diners with a penchant for local attitude should be delighted by Bar El Lechuguita. A small, smoky corner bar not far from the city’s Puente Nueva (New Bridge), El Lechuguita has a lengthy menu of local tapas for under €1 apiece, including their signature dish—a thick cut of a head of lettuce soaked in oil, vinegar and garlic. Don’t ask what else is in the dish. The endearingly rude duo who work at El L every night except Sunday won’t tell you.

Don’t bark orders at the waiters. They’ll ignore you. The bar long ago did away with traditional bar etiquette by printing their menu on small pads scattered across the bar. Pick one up, check off what you want and and hand it over along with a drink request.

El Lechuguita opens at 9:00 each night but Sunday. Arrive early as the crowds are usually waiting outside before the doors open. If you’ve got a strong stomach, try the chorizo cooked in wine.

El Lechuguita is located at Los Remedios 35.

Popularity: 2% [?]

photograph courtesy of zim182  

French soccer legend Zinedine Zidane briefly came out of retirement this past weekend to play in a charity match in Thailand. The match was organized by Adidas, one of Zidane’s many corporate sponsors.

In France, the icon’s celebrity has barely tapered off since the infamous head-butt in last year’s World Cup final. Despite Zidane’s seemingly violent streak, he continues to be the focus of several marketing campaigns. These include a relationship with French corporate heavyweight Danone. “Zizou” is a staple on highway billboards, TV commercials, and on both the sports and tabloid pages.

These days in France, Zidane is known for his humanitarianism, celebrity, football legend, and philanthropy. Everywhere else, it seems, he is known for one, wild, ram-like head-butt.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Last week, German airline Condor announced that airfares for Winter 2007/2008 are already on sale. For Cheapos who like to plan trips long in advance, this sale announcement will come as a welcome opportunity to snap up cheap fares for next winter.

Condor flies to a dizzying number of destinations across the world, including Grenada, the Seychelles, Salvador da Bahia, and Mombasa. Long-haul one-way fares begin at €165 once taxes and charges have been taken into account. One-way fares on short flights begin at €52.

Condor flies from 21 airports in Germany.

Popularity: 2% [?]

photograph courtesy of Kaymaria Daskarolis  

If you are feeling a bit guilty about all the carbon dioxide emitted by the airplanes winging you from place to place—but not quite guilty enough to stop flying altogether—consider buying carbon offsets. Offsetting your carbon or climate footprint can help reduce global warming.

We were very curious about just what these carbon offsets are, so we checked ’em out. Turns out they are basically contributions to energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other projects intended to make a difference in preserving natural resources and protecting the environment.

Offsetting carbon dioxide emissions does not have to be an expensive proposition, either. If you fly about 6,000 miles, you can take responsibility for your CO2 emissions for $6.25; offsetting 20,000 miles in the air will set you back $20.90; 40,000 flight miles, $41.80; and 100,000 miles, only $104.50!

Popularity: 1% [?]

photograph courtesy of mayamarioka  

The Gers in France’s southwest is a land of rolling hills and medieval bastide towns. Utterly unspoiled by mass tourism and sparsely populated by farmers and secondary residents from Britain and the Netherlands, the region comes alive in summer with a series of top-notch music festivals, notably Jazz in Marciac and Tempo Latino in Vic-Fezensac. In winter, skiing in the Pyrenees is the main draw.

Driving south towards Tarbes, gateway to the ski resorts, a great place to stop for lunch is La P’tite Marmite Gasconne in Mielan. La P’tite offers a daily blackboard menu with a plat du jour at €7.50 and an €11 menu with soup, salad plate, main course, wine, cheese or dessert and coffee.

Pull up a table at the non-smoking alcove behind the bar, or, if you prefer to brave the smoke and the thick Gascon accents, seat yourself in the main dining room alongside an aquarium full of tropical fish and scan the local papers for the rugby results with the locals.

The day we visited there was lentil soup followed by half a coquelet served on a bed of vegetables and couscous perfumed with curry.

La P’tite Marmite Gasconne is located at Place du Padouen, Mielan 32170. It is open for lunch Monday through Friday.

Popularity: 1% [?]

One of our favorite art writers, Jackie Wullschlager, delivers the goods in her column in today’s Financial Times. Today’s subject: “Renoir Landscapes,” an exhibit currently showing at London’s National Gallery.

The highly recognized master Impressionist painter is a household name, of course, and his paintings are widely reproduced. The exhibition of 70-odd works on display at the National Gallery consists of lesser-known, privately-owned landscapes that display settings and color palettes at odds with the best-known of Renoir’s works.

Reflecting on the collection, Wullschlager writes: “To speak of an unknown Renoir is to risk paradox, but this show delivers precisely that.”

It’s phrasings like this one that make us swoon, Jackie.

Popularity: 2% [?]

photograph courtesy of abschied  

They’ve gone and done it again.

Italy is once again on shaky ground, as far as government is considered at least. This past Wednesday, Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned following an unsuccessful vote. 

Prodi resigned after several of his governmental coalition partners opposed plans to deploy troops in Afghanistan and expand a U.S. airbase on Italian soil.

But wait! Late Thursday night the government agreed to a 12-point plan to back Prodi and keep him in power!

One could be forgiven for confusing this political drama with a television soap opera.

Might we be headed back to the bad old Berlusconi days, when things were at the very least a bit more—how shall we put this?—entertaining?

Popularity: 4% [?]

photograph courtesy of BlueDjinn  

Today easyJet announced two new routes: Dortmund-Edinburgh and Dortmund-Thessaloniki, bringing the number of destinations served by the airline in and out of Dortmund up to 13.

Dortmund-Edinburgh begins on May 30, and Dortmund-Thessaloniki begins on May 31.

The flights went on sale earlier today, though they’re so new that they’re not yet showing up on the easyJet route map.

Other low-cost carriers serving Dortmund include Air Berlin and Wizz Air. There’s very little competition on individual low-cost routes in and out of Dortmund, with the three low-cost airlines serving a remarkable 26 destinations ranging from London to Antalya.

Popularity: 3% [?]