We’re big fans of the city-wide all-night party trend in Europe. Paris seems to have come to the party first in October 2002 with its “Nuit Blanche” of performances, gallery openings, monument tours, and late-night shenanigans.

Rome followed the next year, launching “Notte Bianca” with great success. Indeed, according to party planners, the party has become an event the Italian capital “can no longer do without!”

Rome has just announced that “Notte Bianca 2007″ will take place the night of Saturday, September 8th (with some events happening the day before). This year’s show will promote a message of cultural difference and understanding, and will feature hundreds of acts performed by artists all night long throughout the city.

Which kind of events? According to the event’s website:

For Saturday September 8th the programme includes performances, concerts, plays, dance shows, magic and circus arts, contemporary art installations, fireworks, even a concert of church bells, all characterised by tradition and experimentation, merging together for one night an ensemble of artistic capabilities, cultural scope, knowledge, techniques and ways of expressing art and entertainment, all very different one from the other, and that is both multifaceted and harmonious.

We’re there. More information and event schedules: official site.

Meanwhile, Paris has only said that this year’s event will take place in October. For more info, the mayor’s office is already hyping it on their website.

There’s been a lot of buzz about Paris’ new city-wide bike push that put over 10,000 bikes on the street for rent (read our earlier post). According to the plan, anyone with a credit card can join the program, which lends bikes for 30-minute treks for almost nothing (membership in the program costs as low as $44 a year).

Budget Travel’s blog on Wednesday pointed out a serious problem for Americans ready to hop on a bike: The rental kiosks, it turns out, only take European micro-chipped enhanced credit cards.

As US tourists in France usually find out early in their trip, American credit cards are not equipped with the little microchip that makes French cards tick. This sometimes, but not always, causes trouble when swiping at a restaurant, in a store, or even (our personal favorite) in a Metro station. Now it’s at it again, jamming the bike rental process. ARGH!

We are hopeful that Mayor Delanoë will remedy this “chip” issue as soon as possible, so our people can get pedaling! (Or, perhaps, we should be begging our American banks to equip our cards with the chips?) While he’s at it, fix those pesky Metro machines, which accept only bechipped cards or coins! (Many stations don’t have live agents selling tickets and passes, either, leading to some very confusing and maddening situations.)

Some bright news, however:

For those with chips on their cards, the bike plan seems to be a smashing success. The LA Times’ Marjorie Miller wrote Monday that it’s almost a victim of its own success, as potential riders often show up at bike stations only to find all the bikes already rented. Some taxi drivers also seem to be “over” the new onslaught of bikers, driving close to our 3-speed pioneers.

Meanwhile, Serge Schmemann writes in yesterday’s New York Times that Paris is wonderful by bus, bike, train… about anything other than a car. He thinks other big city mayors should study the way Paris made city driving hard, while introducing easier, cheaper, and faster public transportation.

We agree. Other big cities could learn some things from Paris — and New York is getting serious about making life more difficult (and expensive) for drivers. Just Paris, take our cards, please!

Three cheers for easyJet’s announcement yesterday that they’ve updated their website to show ticket prices inclusive of all taxes and surcharges from the first page of search results. This has long been a frustration on both airline websites and airfare price comparison sites, where taxes and surcharges aren’t tacked on until subsequent pages.

What’s the competition doing? A quick check on some of our favorite low-cost carriers reveals:

• easyJet displays taxes and surcharges on the first search results page, as promised in their press release. In our test, a London Gatwick to Pisa (Aug 27) flight was immediately offered at £44.99.
• Ryanair doesn’t show taxes and charges on the results page, waiting to reveal the extra fees until after you’ve selected a flight. In our case, we found a flight from London Stansted to Pisa (same date as above) for “£19.99.” However, on the next page it was revealed to actually cost £45.19, slightly higher than easyJet.
• Air Berlin plays it both ways, displaying the price without tax at the top of the page (in a price matrix), while showing the full price, with extra charges, at the bottom of the same page. Clever!
• SkyEurope, however, takes the cake, showing you one low price on the results page and then requiring that you click “agree to terms and conditions” before proceeding to the next page which shows the full price, inclusive of taxes.

Come on, guys. What are you waiting for? Show us what you’ve got!

It’s possible to get almost anywhere in Amsterdam by foot, tram, bus, and, of course, the trusty Dutch bicycle. Since 2003, the city, recognizing a need for speedier transit, has been digging for a subway. In a city lined with canals and soggy earth, a dig of this sort presents some unique challenges.  

Yesterday’s Boston Globe had an interesting look at the logistics. Let’s just say that Amsterdam is a “city in motion”…

Most of Amsterdam is supported by a system of underground wooden poles and pilings, and the land itself tends to shift and sink a couple millimeters a year. And if digging wasn’t a big enough problem, large, rumbling trains could affect this delicate balancing act once the subway’s up and running.

Best of luck with your dig, Amsterdam. We wish you stability.

Last week, Paris’ office of tourism announced that 69 million tourists visited the city’s attractions in 2006. Yowsa. And what were the most popular sights?

• First place: Notre Dame — 13.5 million visitors graced the cathedral, up from 13 million in 2005.
• Second place: Basilica de Sacre Coeur in Montmartre — 10 million visits, up from 8 million in 2005.
• Third place: The Louvre — 8.3 million visits, up 10.3 % from 2005.
• Honorable mention: Musee d’Orsey, the 20-year old museum of 19th and 20th Century art, placed seventh with 3 million visits, its highest number ever.

But who are these visitors? The New York Times reports today that the country is aware of the foreign-born demographic packing its museums (occasionally turning the Louvre into a “crowded railroad station”).

President Sarkozy’s government is considering ways to bring the French back into their own cultural institutions, including free admission for les francais. Just don’t bump Mona…

The US dollar fell to record lows against the euro on Wednesday, hitting $1.3834, its lowest value since the introduction of the euro in 1999. Today it’s still down there — $1.3819 to the euro in mid-morning trading.

Why? Industry analysts blame it on a lousy US housing market. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s speech yesterday, in which he cut back on 2007 projections for the US economy, didn’t help either.

How does this affect US tourists in Europe? The New York Time’s ran a reality check yesterday that was kind of funny and kind of scary. After all, you can laugh off a $5 cups of coffee in London. But $500 for a hotel room? Come on, folks! You can easily find something more affordable.

For the second time this year, Ryanair has been reprimanded for publishing misleading advertisements about its environmental record.

The BBC reports that the Advertising Standards Agency in Great Britain has determined that the low-cost carrier was “likely to mislead” in recent ads claiming that the airline industry “accounts for just 2% of carbon dioxide emissions.”

Ryanair apparently forgot to mention that the figure represented global rather than country-specific emissions. According to the UK government, the aviation industry in the UK accounts for about 5.5 % of the country’s CO2 emissions each year.

Ryanair has been ordered not to repeat the ad. Better luck next time!

Paris’ cool (and green) mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, just got even cooler (and greener) when he launched Vélib’, a massive public biking initiative on Sunday.

Under the plan, bikers may borrow a bike from one of 750 pick-up spots around town and drop it off at any other center within 30 minutes. (If you need more time to get there, you’re charged by the half hour thereafter.) Joining the program is super cheap: €1 a day, € 5 a week, or €29 a year.

The intention is to get more people biking, and do something about congestion in the city center. Bravo!

We liked Katrin Bennhold’s piece in the International Herald Tribune. (It also appeared with a couple of edits in yesterday’s NY Times.)

A note to EuroCheapo Blog readers:

EuroCheapo’s Blogger-in-Chief, Alex Robertson Textor, is taking his long-anticipated trek through southern and Eastern Europe right now. Included in his whirlwind tour: Athens, Thessaloniki, Skopje (Macedonia), Belgrade, Ljubljana, Vienna, Barcelona, and Madrid.

We miss you back in steamy NYC, Alex! Of course, we’ll share any dispatches that reach the office. Have fun!

The EuroCheapo blog will continue to post travel news and deals in Alex’s absence.

They might not be giving away free flights à la Ryanair, but Slovak low-cost carrier SkyEurope is at least trying to keep up in the cheap fares department.

Through July 29, SkyEurope is offering €39 all-inclusive one-way fares. No word on which routes are included in the sale. We performed our industry-feared fare check and came up with fares close to the €39 all-inclusive base, but none right on point.

In any case, promotional fares are good for travel between July 19 and October 27.