The last time my team reached a final, food was on ration and Vera Lynn was warbling at the troops. If your team has just done better, in the Champions League for instance, and you fancy savouring the occasion, you might need a visa. (I say might because, at the time of writing, there was confusion as to whether Chelsea and Man U fans might be allowed to travel without visas. If so, they should read on anyway, and stash the information away for the summer hols.)"Are you buying – or just looking?"
MyVisaAdviser is one of a growing breed – a website which combines commercial services with free content. If you register with them and pay them, they will offer you a bespoke service, doing all the leg-work and delivering your visa. If all you want is advice and information, there’s a lot of it here.
Take the Moscow footy match as an example. They’ve put up a dedicated page with an up-front offer of their services, followed by a concise summary of what the do-it-yourself visa hunter needs to do and when. Also particularly useful (now that the Foreign Office website has stopped being helpful on this subject) is the list of addresses for foreign embassies in London.
Some of the advice is a bit dated. Under "Travel Health" is a note about the replacement of the old E111 form 3 years ago. But the link to the Department of Health information about the replacement cover is accurate and up-to-date.
If you’ve some money left after buying your cup final ticket, your plane ticket and your visa, MyVisaAdviser even has a list of worldwide charities – that’s a good idea.
(From the Gateway to websites, select "Transport & tourism". MyVisaAdviser is under "Tourism & travel: world".)
Drink/don’t drink (the water)
Once you’ve got your visa sorted out, you can start to check out the local scene at your favoured destination. You could do a lot worse than visit Lonely Planet Destinations. This online version of the printed guides has gone rather high-tec. They use text, photos and videos to do the same job as the books – help you to have some fun while staying safe.
Be warned: the video clips are on the tiniest screen I’ve ever seen, and I couldn’t figure out how to make it bigger. But it’s a free resource, so who’s quibbling?
(From the Gateway to websites, select "Transport & tourism". Lonely Planets Destinations is under "Tourism & travel: world".)
Picture credit: kconnors/morguefile.com
3 comments:
I always read the web treasure hunt email with great interest, but then because I've read it already, I've never then clicked the link to look at the blog itself. I must say, it looks very nice indeed.
Thanks, Nicola. We can make this version a bit prettier than the email version!
Thanks Nicola - spread the word!
;-)
Post a Comment