Let’s wind down and settle into our weekend, shall we? Even on a rainy Friday morning, we’ve found inspiration this morning flipping through some other sites. For example:

The web has been busier than the Dublin airspace with stories about Ryanair. Our favorite budget travel rebel at “Less than a Shoestring” last week continued to explain ”Why I Love/Hate RyanAir.” (Let’s say that it has to do with taxes, fees, and working the system. “Dealing with low-cost carriers such as RyanAir is like playing a game. In order to play well, you need to know the rules.”

Meanwhile, over on the other shoe, Spendthrift Shoestring is back from Carriacou and already monitoring the overall health of the low-cost carrier business. Alex points out that Air Berlin and Centralwings have experienced some turbulence, while RyanAir is reporting growth in March. At least some airlines are showing growth. BudgetTravel, reporting on the ATA airline bankruptcy yesterday, suggests that ticketholders check with their credit card company about a getting a refund.

But, back to RyanAir. How does the airline make you feeeel? Europe A La Carte muses about whether travel brands are important, pointing out that “Ryanair has a pretty negative brand image but loads of people (including me) book with them because of the choice of direct flights and low prices. So do brands matter at all?” We think they do, but price might still be the deciding factor.

On the ground, James from About.com’s Europe Travel challenges visitors in Florence to stop and reflect on the number of American tourists crowding the city. “If you close your eyes and listen closely, you could be in Cleveland. Well, except maybe for the quality of the gelato.” He’s pushing for trips out of town, to the hills surrounding Florence.

And for amusing insider-y kvetching, you should treat yourself to Rick Steves’ blog, where the author recounts his adventures updating his Lisbon and Portugal guidebook. Anyone who has been “on the ground” updating a city guide will laugh (and cringe). Our favorite note: “Hotel Lisboa Tejo: Our room was extremely spacious and clean–but street on the west side of the building was full of young and very busy prostitutes.” Ah yes, how to deal with the “prostitute factor” when deciding whether or not to include a great budget hotel. We’ve been there!

Looking out at a rainy morning, we’ll happily swap for any prostitute-lined street in Lisbon. We’ll take Florence, even with the tourists. Heck, we’ll even take Cleveland, if it’s sunny…

Have a nice weekend.

Nothing like a midweek digest of recently noteworthy posts and stories. Right?

1. Christopher Elliott’s list of strange travel surcharges is both hilarious and on target. Though it refers more to a business traveler demographic than a Cheapo one, Elliott does touch on the European budget airline habit of imposing extreme and varied surcharges.

2. Trippist spreads the word about extended shopping hours in Amsterdam. Shops in central Amsterdam districts will be open until 10 p.m. on December 20, 21, and 23.

3. Which song will be the UK’s top-selling single the week of Christmas? The Brits take the Xmas Number One v. seriously. Caroline Briggs checks out the top contenders for the BBC.

On our radar screens today:

1. Yesterday, Ryanair announced four new routes connecting Ireland and France. Connections between Dublin and Brest, Rodez, and Tours will kick off in April, and a seasonal Cork-Carcassonne link will fly from late May through early September.

2. Vardzia, Georgia is Gadling’s “Where on Earth?” spot.

3. Andy Martin blogs entertainingly on very English Bournemouth.

4. Over the last few months, Volareweb has added a bunch of destinations. Volareweb now flies to Helsinki, Lodz, and Rotterdam, among other destinations. We’d be more excited if Volareweb weren’t one of the least reliable low-cost carriers we’ve come across.

We slept in a good hour beyond our typical wake-up time. So it’s a sleepy Tuesday. This is just background information. Ignore at will, but know that our morning coffee is especially appreciated today.

The following things have caught our attention over the last few days:

1. Ryanair has announced five new routes in and out of Brussels Charleroi (to Bergerac, Limoges, Perpignan, Porto, and Zaragoza.) No Ryanair expansion these days comes without a cancellation, though there’s only one casuality here: the London Stansted-Charleroi route. Has Eurostar felled Ryanair on the London-Brussels route? It would appear so.

2. On Sunday, the New York Times published travel articles on Kazakhstan and Greenland. If Kazakhstan represents the eastern edge of Europe (with just a piece of its territory west of the Urals) and Greenland represents its western edge (technically a part of the Americas, but tied culturally and politically to Europe), then the NYT pleased us to no end on Sunday. More off-the-beaten-path destinations, please!

3. Those interested in traveling to or from Dublin and Cork over the winter should explore the fab Aer Lingus sale on through midnight Thursday (that is, midnight in Ireland). Good for midweek travel between January 8 and March 12, one-way tickets run just €36, once handling fees are included. Destinations include Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Madrid, Warsaw, and Zurich.

Autumn is here!

1. EastJet announced yesterday that is has acquired GB Airlines. A giddy glance at the GB route map turns up several destinations not currently served by easyJet, including Tangier and Fez in Morocco, Malta, Hurghada and Sharm el Sheik in Egypt, Tunis, Paphos, and Ajaccio and Bastia in Corsica. We’re hoping that easyJet won’t abandon these routes.

2. Jaunted reminds us that Madrid’s Festival de Otoño is in hyperactive mode through the middle of November.

3. Ryanair announced a modest route expansion today, with a new Shannon-Alicante route as well as new routes between Dublin and Palma, Santander, and Zadar. All routes will be inaugurated in March.

Tuesday evening. The skies are gray. And we’re a million miles away, thinking about some of the following things…

1. Like another low-cost carrier sale. TUIfly is selling off winter one-way fares for €11 apiece, taxes and surcharges included. On sale through midnight on Sunday, October 28, these fares are good for travel from November through February.

2. Like Slovenia. Thanks to the Guardian’s Mat Smith, who teases us with tales of night tobogganing in Slovenia.

3. Like green lifestyles, courtesy of our friend Denise Young’s La Vie Verte blog, which appears to be churning out green posts by the truckload.

4. Like free museums. In January, the French government will offer free admission to 14 museums and monuments for a six-month trial period. The cultural sites with waived admission include the fab Cluny Museum in Paris.

We didn’t really think we’d make it through this week. Here’s our Friday list.

1. The most significant event we’ve come across in Europe’s low-cost air world this week is today’s news that Air Berlin is set to purchase Condor. Thomas Cook, which currently owns most of Condor, will be selling the airline to Air Berlin in return for an almost 30 percent stake in the expanded airline, plus €120 million. It still might not happen if Condor minority stakeholder Lufthansa decides to oppose the purchase.

2. We will be visiting Amsterdam in a few weeks and we’re already excited about frites with peanut sauce, Surinamese spicy chicken, and pisang goreng. Our advance research just turned up D’Vijff Vlieghen, which looks like a splurgeworthy place to sample “New Dutch” cuisine.

3. We have it on good authority that Ryanair is trying to muscle its way into Schiphol, and furthermore is considering route expansions to destinations in Tunisia, Croatia, Serbia, and Ukraine.

4. The Guardian delights with this piece on the UK’s top ten pub roasts. We like the looks of The Druid Inn in Goginan, Aberystwyth, Wales.

1. We’re still working our way through some back issues of the remarkable hidden europe. On our commute this morning we had our nose in issue 12, which came out in January of this year. The long feature on night trains made us wistful; the shorter article on Flemish béguinages and their contemporary inheritance (in which we learned that the Brugge béguinage accommodates four dozen single women today) was fabulously suggestive. The piece that almost made us miss our stop, however, was a short, enticing little “snippet” on the diverse and lively Brussels ‘hood of les Marolles.

2. The EU is full of smaller regional groupings; our favorite among these is the Visegrád Four, which encompasses Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. The Czech Republic took over the Visegrád presidency in June, and will hold it through mid-2008. Among other things, the Visegrád group has the potential to serve as a bridge between Ukraine and the EU, should that direction be eventually pursued.

3. Today, Ryanair announced a massive six million seat sale. Fares are technically free—passengers pay taxes and charges only. Tickets are on sale through September 10 for travel from October 1 through February 7. Blackout periods include October 19-November 4 (for flights in and out of the UK and Ireland only) and December 18 through January 8.

1. The September Monocle has a bit of a state-within-a-state theme going on. The issue includes features on Finland’s autonomous Åland Islands, Bolzano, the capital of Italy’s Süd Tirol/Alto Adige region, and an especially fetching multipage feature on Georgia’s Russia-supported breakaway region of Abkhazia. A Monocle dossier on European microstates would be the perfect follow-up.

2. The Netherlands Tourist Board is the world’s first national tourist authority to launch a Second Life tourist board. May they be the last.

3. We recently discovered the Swiss Tourist Board’s rather more useful handy map guide to inexpensive hotels across Switzerland. The guide lists 154 hotels with rates at CHF160 (€97; $133) or under for a double en suite room, including breakfast.

4. We are in love with this brilliant song by Andy Hide. We’ll be petitioning ARIA to invent a new award category for musical adaptations of shocking moments in popular culture shortly.

Photo by Something in between

It’s Thursday. Read up.

1. Tourism is on the rise in Jersey. Bookings on the Channel Island in May, 2007 were up 25 percent over May, 2006 bookings. Clearly Jersey Tourism’s UK television campaign is paying off.

2. SkyEurope is hawking a bunch of €39 all inclusive one-way fares. The fare sale period stretches from July 2 through October 28. Promo fares can be booked until midnight (Central European timezone) on July 8.

3. We’re very curious about BelleAir, the airline that flies to and from Tirana from 14 airports in Italy. We also wonder why their route map appears to refigure Europe politically, ignoring last year’s Serbia-Montenegro split and, more bizarrely, turning Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria into one massive new country.

4. When the weather heats up, as it is currently doing, our minds turn to those tiny garden-and-hut plots so often sighted from behind windows of trains zipping from city to city throughout German-speaking Europe. Typically located on the outskirts of cities, a Kleingarten or Schrebergarten plot provides a way for people of average means to grow vegetables and fruit, get some fresh air, and relax. What a glorious solution to the stresses of urban life. Check out this description of the Schrebergarten phenomenon.