Visiting a city can be a lot cheaper than you think. There is a company that does tours in the main cities in Europe and around the world for free. The guided tours last around two hours and take you around the city to see the most important monuments in it, they also tell a lot of funny stories and history of the city. Very complete and a healthy way to discover the place.

At the end of the tour, every tourist pays what they think the tour is worth…it works with tips so you decide! If you want to know where they are and what they offer, don’t hesitate to visit their webpage!

Today we want to present a web page that we find very interesting.  It is called TargetMap. It consists on a web tool in which you can create your own Worldmaps, maps of an specific country or upload addresses. For example, if you have been abroad and you have saved the addresses of the restaurants, museums, etc you have been to, you can upload them and the web page will create a map with all of them marked.

It is very userfriendly and simple. Once the map has been done you can share it. It is also useful for mapping with data, as it allows you to upload information from Excel.

The event generally known as “The Boat Race“, the famous  rowing race in England between the Oxford University Boat Club and the Cambridge University Boat Club is about to take place. It is held on the Thames in London and this year 2011 it will be on the 26th of March at 17.00. 

The race takes place every year since 1856, with the only exceptions of the two world wars. However, the firt race was held in 1829.

Should you want to watch the race life, don’t forget to be between Putney and Morlake before the start of the race, as more than 250.000 go to the river to watch it.

If you want to know more about it, visit the official page.

We all know what happened in Japan last Friday, 11th March. The Land of the Raising Sun, one of the most popular touristic destination in the last few years, suffered the consequences of the greatest natural disaster of its history.

An earthquake of magnitude 9 in the Ritcher scale battered the whole country. Not only that, it provoked a tsumani that has taken away more than 10,000 lifes, leaving behind a devastated landscape. Losses are still incalculable but at the moment Japanese have a new threat: nuclear meltdown.  The tsunami has caused very serious problems in some nuclear plants, especially in Fukushima. At the moment the level of radiation in Tokio, the capital of the country, has raised alarmingly and people are starting to leave Japan.

Japanese people were able to recover from the great disaster after the Second World War, we hope that the situation will soon be under control so rebuilding works can start. We send them our solidarity and strength.

When you talk about Valencia, most people will think of a coastal city in Spain that year after year hosts thousands of tourists, but Valencia is much more than that.
If you’re going to spend a few days in this city, you can’t miss out on visiting the old quarters, where the Cathedral, the fish market and the Central Market are found.

As far as the modern part of the city is concerned, the City of Arts and Sciences is a must, whether travelling with your partner, with family or friends.

And no doubt, a stroll along the famous beach Malvarrosa is a perfect choice at any time of the year, and don’t forget to stop off for a drink at one of the snack bars by the sea.

If you want to prove how much you know about travelling,  Hotelopia has a fun game every Wednesday on facebook.  Its a very easy game, we post a picture of a monument or a famous place in a city from anywhere in the world. Our fans on facebook are challenged to guess where in the world we are.

A game of pride and culture in which you will compete with yourself, challenge your friends to beat you and see how gets the most!

Play with us, every Wednesday in hotelopia facebook.

Be specially careful if you are thinking of travelling to Spain during the next few months. Workers at the state-owned company that runs Spain’s airports Aena have called 22 days of rolling strikes during peak tourist seasons to protest government plans to sell off half of the firm.

The Government and the President of the Company are open to negotiations but workers insist that if they don’t get to an agreement in their salary and working conditions they will call the strike. This will cause delays and cancellations during the most important seasons of the year, and it can carry severe consecuences for the still weak Spanish economy as well as for the image of the country.

Let’s hope they agree on the terms of an agreement and everyone can enjoy their holidays.

Explorers in the past baptised the cities they discovered with the name of their cities of origin. Sometimes they added the word “New” to distinguish them, that’s the case with New York, some others they didn’t. Check out the pages we’ve found in which you can discover more about this curiosity:

GeoNames is a search engine that gives us the different countries in which we can find a particular city

JetPunk: A fun game in which we can prove how much we know about repeated cities, try it!

Do you want to find out if your town/ city has homonyms all around the world?

If spending more than a weekend in Madrid, Toledo is a must. Situated just half an hour from Madrid (by train), the country’s original ancient capital is overflowing with historical monuments, streets and culture. Surrounded by walls dating from the Roman occupation with Moorish and early Christian additions, Toledo is a deserved World Heritage Site.

After entering Toledo by one of its three impressive gates, one can walk their way through the labyrinth of medieval streets, taking in the Cathedral Primada Santa María, the Jewish Synagogue del Tránsito and the Islamic Mosque de Cristo de la Luz.

A trip to the top of Iglesia de los Jesuitas is an excellent way to observe your impressive surroundings, sometimes not obvious from the close patchwork of streets in the old town.

Visitors shouldn’t miss the opportunity to see El Greco’s masterpiece “El entierro del Conde Orgaz” in the Iglesia de Santo Tomé, which was conceived in Toledo. El Greco spent his adult life in Toledo perfecting his style, may be with inspiration stemming from his beautiful surrounding.

Spending the night in Toledo and walking its lantern lit streets is also a perfect way to experience Spain’s ancient capital and comes highly recommended.