Thinking about postponing that trip to Europe? Jane McIntosh, creator of Jane’s Smart Art Guides™, audio guides for independent travelers, says, “Go ahead and go.”

While the exchange rate keeps getting worse and fuel surcharges increase the cost of flying, there’s still no guarantee that the dollar will power up to the euro’s mojo or that air fares will plummet anytime soon.

Jane recently sent us this dispatch of her top tips for reducing the strain on your overseas budget.

Know when to go. 

If you don’t have to vacation during the summer, don’t. Airfare can cost hundreds less during the off-season. Seasonal pricing holds true for lodging too and off-peak travel ensures shorter lines at museums and other major attractions.

Why not check out a traditional European Christmas market? Click here for a list of some favorites. Remember, the days might be shorter, but Europe seems to be the only place on earth where you can still enjoy cultural offerings in the darkness. Chamber music, anyone?

Compare airfares.

Compare the fares of major airlines with charter flights and consolidators. And, consider flying into a hub like London or Brussels and then transferring to a no-frills airline in order to get to your destination.

You can use tools like CheapoSearch to research low-cost carriers including RyanAir, easyJet and Wizz Air. Check out Kayak and Mobissimo for great fares on major carriers, especially for travel from the U.S. to Europe.

Plan transportation ahead of time.

Especially if you intend to visit more than one city, look into your travel options well in advance. Car rentals are much less expensive when reserved from home and purchasing inter-city rail passes before you go can also save you money. Truly intrepid rail pass travelers avoid hotel bills by riding overnight trains (a favorite Cheapo pastime)! RailEurope, AutoEurope, and EuropCar are great places to rev your engines.

Forget about taxis.

Taking a taxi from the airport may not have seemed a luxury two years ago, but it certainly appears so now. If you’re traveling alone, public transportation is likely to be your cheapest option. Advance “googling” will help you determine the economics of train versus taxi if you’re traveling with others.

Rent an apartment, flat or villa. 

To drastically reduce your cost-per-night, stay in an apartment, flat or villa instead of a hotel. The web is awash with vacation rental agents. But beware falling in love with an apartment or home you find on a web site and then getting stuck with an unresponsive agent. Do your agency homework first, then choose your lodging. Will the agent be available to you (in English) if you have questions or need help?

Go local.

Use the hotel room’s coffee maker and, especially if you’re staying in an apartment, find out where the nearest food markets are. Going out for breakfast can add up fast, so load up on the hotel’s continental fare.  If possible, stay somewhere that offers a kitchen as dining out every night adds up quickly. It’s fun planning dinner when many of the available ingredients are so different from what you’re used to back home. Just remember that 1 kilo = 2.2 pounds!

Be your own tour guide.

It’s this easy: take a detailed map and load up your iPod with any number of walking tours, site guides, and podcasts.  You’ll find touring at your own pace and customizing sightseeing to your own interests is a great way to go! If you have your heart set on a tour, look for economical multi-day or multi-site tourist passes. But forget about group tours, sightseeing buses, or expensive private guides.

Take a walk.

In some cities the cost of public transportation is off the charts, so walking is the best way to get to know a place—and save money in the process. If you prefer public transport, look for off-peak fares, multi-day tickets, zone passes (like the Oyster card in London), and other money-saving deals.

Make your own souvenirs. 

Instead of buying souvenirs, take pictures. With a digital camera your millionth shot costs no more than your first. Just be sure to take extra batteries and memory cards from home as these items are expensive to purchase in Europe.

About the author: Jane McIntosh is the creator of Jane’s Smart Art Guides™ (www.JanesSmartArt.com), audio guides for independent travelers who like to know what they’re looking at.

Two months ago a credit card ID thief nabbed my account information and went on a shopping spree. Over a two week period this (Editor’s note: expletive deleted) bandit purchased, among other items, snacks at the racetrack, many tanks of gas, and a new pair of shoes.

In the end, $2,000 was charged to my card. I reported the case early soon after the first purchase, but could then only sit back and watch it continue. Feeling helpless, all I could do was get my schadenfreude on. I was hoping for stale popcorn, an accidental tank of diesel, and bunions upon their feet.

Worst of all, though, I felt pretty dumb. I use my debit card for nearly all of my transactions and always assumed this was the “smart” way to pay. After all, I could view itemized sales online at any time and I didn’t need to carry around excess cash in my wallet.

Rather than swear off using my card in the future, I decided to make a few changes to how I used it to prevent ID theft in the future, with special attention paid (ha!) to managing receipts in the correct manner, and making sure to monitor my account regularly.

While my ID theft occurred locally, travelers can be even more susceptible while they’re abroad, as they generally buy more stuff when traveling. We thought about that this morning, when reading Darren’s excellent post on Travel Rants on travelers having their credit cards frozen while traveling (fun, fun!).

Here are some of our tips for keeping your credit and debit cards secure while traveling.

#1: Tell your bank before you leave.

This will help them be on the lookout for potentially fraudulent activity and notify you quickly should anything odd occur. Even more importantly, this will reduce the chance the bank will freeze your account while you’re on the road.

#2: Diversify how you pay for purchases.

Consider using one credit card for specific items (i.e., use Amex only for hotels and car rentals, as you’ll get points plus some Amex cards automatically provide discounted car insurance) and think about taking a small amount of traveler’s checks just in case.

#3: Tell your bank how to contact you while you’re away.

Give them your personal email address and check your email at least weekly. Also consider taking your cell phone and tell your provider you want to activate an international plan for the time you’re away. Leave your phone off and check messages once a day (roaming charges and other fees could quickly get out of control if you leave it on, so be careful). If you use a web-based home phone system such as Vonage, consider having your voicemail forwarded to your email. And if you’re super crafty, consider forwarding calls from your home phone to a friend or relative (but tell them first!).

#4: Keep your bank and credit card contact information handy.

If you’ve ever grown frustrated while holding the line when you called your credit card or bank, imagine being charged outrageous international rates while you wait. Get the most direct customer service number for your bank and take it with you.

#5: Stay away from sketchy ATM machines.

Stay away from ATM machines that aren’t connected to larger banks. Who knows who will gain access to your information. Also, if your card gets swallowed for some reason, you’ll have a hard time getting it back quickly.

#6: Guard your receipts.

Do not simply toss receipts from cafes, restaurant, bars and shops in the closest trash can. Keep them in one place while you travel and shred them when you get home. It will lessen the chance of having your credit card info get into the wrong hands, plus you’ll be able to ooohh and aaahh about “that great dinner” when you return home.

Do you have any other helpful credit card security tips to share? Leave a comment below and let us know!

We’ll admit it: we’re fans of the TV show “Lost” (Aaron’s a member of the Oceanic Six?? Helloooo curveball!) We’ll also admit that today is an exceptionally wintry, snowy, icy Friday in New York City and we’re finding it hard not to daydream about Lost-y seaside escapes.

Thus inspired, we’ve decided to plan a spontaneous (if imaginary) last-minute trip for next weekend somewhere warm and sunny. Where could we walk on a beach, eat great seafood , see interesting sights, and make our euros stretch to the max?

Oh yeah, and stick to a budget of less than $1,000? Here’s our plan:

Destination: Lisbon

Why? It boasts more than 300 days of sunshine a year, is currently 65 degrees, has great nightlife, tasty food, and is budget-friendly. In short, we love Lisbon.

Getting there

An initial search on CheapTickets.com found a flight for $590 departing Friday at 6 pm (heck, we’d only have to leave work a couple hours early) and returning to NYC on Tuesday night at 7:25 pm. We found a marginally cheaper flight ($577) on Farecast, but it required a nearly 23 hour return flight… maybe next time.

Where to stay

After a quick CheapoSearch for Lisbon we found over 50 central accommodation options for under $100. Twenty of these are under $60. Now we’re talking! We considered the “Lisbon Poets Hostel” for $29 per night. After all, Charlie would stay there, right? However, considering that we’re already ”sleeping” one night on the airplane, we’d appreciate a private room rather than a four-person shared room. Instead, we settled on the “Pension Royal” in the desperately beautiful Bairro Alto, where a private single can be snagged for $53 per night, and you’re situated just steps from cafes and nightlife.

Total cost for three nights: $159.

Where to eat seafood

There are endless choices of great restaurants in Lisbon, but one of the absolute gems is Nariz Do Vinho Tinto, located in the Lapa district. While the prices aren’t super-budget (entrees are around $15), we’re looking for great food and the owner, José Matos Cristovão, is also editor of the Portuguese edition of Epicur, a Spanish food magazine. We’re in!

Approximate weekend food budget: $100

Where to go

Sticking to a tight budget in Lisbon is easier than many other European cities. In order to save on my “splurgy” seafood extravaganza (we all make choices, after all), I’ll be picking up a 48-hour Lisboa Card ($37) to receive discount entrance fees to museums and free rides on the CARRIS system.

Specific attractions include the Basilica da Estrela and our favorite Cheapo park, Jardim da Estrela. The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga is free until mid-afternoon on Sundays, too…perfect.

Total cost with a couple museum admissions thrown in: $50

Total Cost of the Getaway 

Adding it all up, this escape, including flight, hotel, seafood, and daytime activities could be ours for $899. You could spend more than that staying in New York! (We’ll just keep telling ourselves that!) OK, so it’s just a snowy daydream… but it’s good to know that somewhere affordable the sun is shining.

It is always worth pondering quite where is the best place to change trains. Many journeys across Europe offer multiple options. No sane Brit ever chooses to change trains at Birmingham New Street—a sort of subterranean Hades somewhere in the English Midlands—and few are ever really forced to do so. For many rail itineraries across England give a plethora of possible points for an hour’s leisure time, to enjoy a coffee and a bit of fresh air while waiting for the next train connection.

This is the case in many other European countries as well. Surely no rational human being ever decided that Warsaw’s eastern station (Warszawa Wschodnia) was the ideal place to mull over the affairs of the world for an hour or two between trains. Generous-hearted souls we may be, but it is difficult to find a good word for Wschodnia – unless you want to catch the pulse of what life was like in much of eastern and central Europe two decades ago. Take a look at this architectural gem and the surrounding cityscape.

And then there are the railway stations where it is an absolute delight to linger between trains, the sort of places where changing trains is a blessing. Dresden Hauptbahnhof is emerging from a protracted reconstruction to become one of those. Cologne’s Hauptbahnhof already is. Ignore the frenzied bustle of its shopping mall (a tribute to poor taste and greasy food) and head instead for the cathedral, a mere thirty-second walk from the station’s main entrance.

It doesn’t take a lot to transform an enforced layover into a memorable travel moment. Brussels Midi is the largest of the rail stations in the Belgian capital, and the area of town in which it is located is nothing to write home about. But we change trains there often and La Table du Midi, an unpretentious café just a stone’s throw from the railway platforms, makes it all worthwhile.

There are some stations which are just fabulous places to arrive and linger, unquestionably good spots to change trains. Among our favourites are Zürich Hauptbahnhof (so well placed for the city centre) and Berlin’s new Hauptbahnhof (a crystal cathedral for transport.)

So check those schedules carefully. You simply don’t want to change trains at Warszawa Wschodnia or Birmingham New Street.

This is the seventh in a series of fortnightly blog posts by the editors of hidden europe.

Even the most seasoned European traveller can be caught unawares by rail schedules changes. Most European rail companies introduce major timetable changes over the second weekend in December, and this year there are some big alterations in the offing.

There is no more civilised way of making a big hop across Europe than on a night train, and the new schedules see a whole raft of new night train services. Take Amsterdam for example. The Dutch city has always featured on Europe’s night train schedules, but for 2008 Amsterdam secures new daily services to Copenhagen, Dresden, Milan, Minsk, Moscow, Prague, and Warsaw.

For the first time for many years Switzerland and Bavaria will benefit from direct overnight trains to Poland and points east, with new direct night sleeper services from Basel SBB and Munich to Warsaw and Moscow. Fixed fares apply for travel on most European night train routes, often with little advantage for railpass holders. A one-way journey in a shared sleeper costs from €69. For those on a budget, couchettes are priced from €49 and a one-way overnight in a reclining seat begins at €29.

The changes are of course not limited to night train services. New for 2008 are a daily direct train from both Vienna and Prague to Stralsund on Germany’s Baltic coast, a very handy new daytime train from Kraków to Budapest (less than nine hours on a beautiful route through the mountains that straddle the Polish-Slovakian border), a new fast direct daytime service from Paris to Munich (just over six hours) to supplement the long-standing Paris-Munich night train, a new direct Berlin to Copenhagen link (where the entire train gets shipped on a ferry between Denmark and Germany), and a new direct once daily train from Geneva Airport to Venice.

Rail travel in Europe can challenge even the most competent travel planner. Web sites like those of the Deutsche Bahn can help. But there is really no substitute for the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable, a gem of a book updated each month. For many savvy European travellers, it is required bedtime reading.

This is the fifth in a series of fortnightly blog posts by the editors of hidden europe.

Photo by Sacha QS

There are so many summer festivals in France that it’s hard to know where to begin. The abundance of festivals means that no matter where you are traveling in France, there is sure to be a festival happening somewhere nearby.

Here’s a brief rundown of the heavyweights. Most are big ticket events which tend to be booked out in advance, but don’t be afraid to go along for the “off” events, which fill the streets of beautiful historic towns with live performances showcasing up and coming talents.

Theatre: The Festival D’Avignon (6 July-27 July) celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. Avignon has a huge “off” festival playing in parallel with hundreds of free performances of dance, mime, puppetry, circus, and street theatre. So you don’t need to understand French to enjoy Avignon’s “off” festival! A budget hotel with an excellent central location for festival-goers is the Mercure Cite des Papes, at 1, rue Jean Vilar.

Opera: Festival International d’Art Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence (June 29 through July 22) is famous for lavish productions staged in magnificent outdoor settings, notably in the courtyard of the former archbishop’s palace. This year’s highlight is Leos Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead,” staged by Patrice Chereau and directed by Pierre Boulez.

Rock: Les Eurokeenes in the eastern town of Belfort (June 29 through July 1) is an institution. This year’s lineup includes Air, Phoenix, Antony and the Johnsons, Queens of the Stone Age, TV on the Radio, and Klaxons.

Photography: The Rencontres D’Arles (July 3 through September 16; see Arles above) is the photography rendez-vous of the season, with an eclectic selection, including the work of Spanish photographer Alberto Garcia-Alix.

Photo courtesy of Jaypeg

If you’re anything like us, you’ve taken your fair share of late-night budget flights into London Stansted, that hub of hubs motoring Ryanair’s route map. For those traveling into London post-flight, here’s a quick guide to escape from Stansted.

Stansted Express runs its last train to the Liverpool Street station at midnight Tuesday through Thursday and 12:30 a.m. Friday through Monday. Service begins at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday to Thursday and at 6:00 a.m. Friday through Monday.

National Express operates shuttle service to Victoria Station around the clock every ten minutes. The 90-minute trip costs £10 one way and £17 roundtrip. Children ages 3-15 travel at half-fare.

The Terravision Express Shuttle travels to both Victoria Station and Liverpool Street, departing every 30 minutes. Adult fare is £7, and children travel at half-fare. Tickets must be booked 24 hours in advance of travel.

As we reported back in February, easyBus is slated to provide shuttle service from Stansted to London in June for £7 one way. Booking online will bump your fare down to £2.

Photo by darth roland

Increasing numbers of travellers have opted to factor in carbon emissions as a key consideration in making a decision on how to get from A to B.

Thanks to SNCF Travel, you can weigh the costs of three modes of transport—car, train and air—with the Ecocomparateur, a tool launched late last year. For example, we typed in Paris-Berlin and found that a 12 and a half hour train trip would generate 31 kg of carbon emissions compared with the 152 kg produced by a journey by air. The calculator also offers price comparisons—in this case €152 for the train fare and €566 for the regular flight.

Air France has sought, so far without success, to snuff out the Ecocomparateur on the grounds that some of the figures it spits out are inaccurate.

At any rate, the effort is part of the SNCF’s drive to embrace sustainable tourism. Next month, employees will appear in a snazzy new uniform designed by Christian Lacroix. The traditional gray background of the uniforms will be enlivened with flashes of violet, red and green. What’s more, the textiles themselves are sourced from fair trade suppliers.

Photo by Frogletina

Gites de France, France’s biggest and most popular source for rural holiday rentals and farmstays, has launched a huge promotional drive called “Mai” toi au vert on its website this week, with over 2000 rental holiday homes (which sleep up to six) available at a flat rate of €200 a week. This rate represents a discount of up to 60 per cent on standard rates. Larger gites designed to accommodate up to 12 persons are going for €250. The offer is valid through May 26th.

The gites are rated with wheat stalks—or “Epis”—instead of the usual star system, and most can be rented for weekends.

The Gites de France Web site—go to the French version because the English one doesn’t feature all the promotions—has other interesting deals this month, including 30 percent off certain weekends at a 4-epi eco-gite in Normandy, near Alencon. Discounted rates apply for the following weekends: May 4-6, June 8-10, and June 15-17.

The Atlantic coast, from Biarritz down to Saint Jean de Luz, has become wildly popular lately as many beachgoers have fled the crowds and high prices of the Mediterranean for the cooler temperatures and “surf’s up” vibe of the Atlantic. While this has been great for the bar and restaurant scene, finding affordable hotel rooms has become increasingly tricky.

Here’s our selection of “Cheapo-friendly” bed and breakfasts in and around Biarritz:

Nere Chocoa, a beautiful “Basco-Spanish” house located on the grounds of a huge park, has 3 bedrooms starting at €70 a night. 28, rue Larreguy tel: 06 0833 8435

Villa Flore  is conveniently located close to the beaches and has rooms starting at €75 a night. 6 av des Marronniers tel: 06 0772 3930

Le Mamelon Vert is a cosy country house with views of the Adour river and the Pyrenees. Rooms start at €85 a night; 2 nights minimum.

Note that the SNCF, the French National Railway, has opened its reservations for the summer so now is the time to book those summertime train trips. Peak holiday season in France is July 14-Aug 15, so anything outside that window means less-crowded trains.