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The Huron Expositor, 1970-11-05, Page 16Save Money Europe the Adventurous Way SUMMER IN EUROPE Trying to keep cool in the heat of an Italian afternoon Susan and Andy White relax in a compound outside of Venice. On the right is their home for 10 months, a 6' by 5' tent. BALL-MACAULAY BUILDING SUPPLIES CLINTON — 482-9514 n SEAFORTH — 527-0910 HENSALL — 262-2713 Here at Ball and Macaulay You Will Find the Latest in Lighting Fixtures for Your Every Requitement • See Our Displays — 0 • IT LEANS BUT IT COSTS The leaning tower of Pisa, In Italy, really does lean - its right side has settled into about 4 feet of earth. Because of the tight money aspect of their budget trip, the Whites didn't spend the 504 admission fee and climb to the top. 1 , 16- .THE HURON EXPOSITOR, SEAFORTH, ONT., NOV. 5, 1970 SEAFORTH MEAT MARKET Fresh Shoulder — 5-6 lbs. PORK ROAST ap, Store Sliced Cooked HAM 1/2 lb. • Lean Butt PORK CHOPS 59Fb • Store Sliced BACON Breakfast 11/2 lbs. • or T-Bone Tender Wing STEAK BILL McLAUGHLIN HIS 2nd Is Celebrating • AS YOUR SEAFORTH AREA DEALER By Susan White Pictures by Andy White (Editor's note - Andrew and Susan White have completed a 12,000 mile tour that took them through North Africa, Europe and the British Isles. During the ten months camping trip they travel- led by thumb, bus, train and car. This, the second in a series of reports about some of the things they saw, tells of the advantages of a holiday in Europe,) Instead of longing for a two week trip to Florida this winter, why don't you consider going to Spain? You can fly to Spain or Portugal for that matter, spent two weeks in a good beach front hotel and fly back for less than the cost of a car trip to Florida and two weeks in a medium priced hotel there. For the secret of a really cheap place to vacation, stop looking at this continent and look at Europe and North Africa.Your savings will go much farther in Europe where most people earn half of what we do and prices are lower than in North America. Getting there is fairly cheap - - Air Canada and other airlines offer reasonable round trip ex- cursion fares and special package deals (C P air has 16 day sun tours to Portugal for $400), but at any rate, you can make up the air fare with the cheap prices in most countries once you. arrive. On a visit to Florida in February 1969, my husband and I never paid less than $12 a night for a fairly comfortable hotel room. You can stay in a lovely modern beachfront hotel on the Costa Del Sol coast of Spain or, 'in the Algarve, Portugal's sunny Mediterranean coast, for about $5 a night for a double room. Check a budget travel guide, like Europe on $5 a day or Fieldings' low cost guide to Europe or with Spanish, Portuguese or Moroccan tourist offices for names and ad- dresses of hotels that suit your budget. Avoid the Hiltons, Holiday Inns and other American - affiliated hotels like the plague-- unless you want to pay, North American prices for imitation Spanish food and atmosphere. You can have the real thing at a fraction of the cost these North American oriented places charge, safely and comfortably by patronizing hotels and restaurants that the cautious and budget conscious British and German tourists use. It is ridiculous to pay $20 fora double room in a country where you can get a double room and three gour- met meals a day ft:11.15 per person in a resort hotel. If the weather Is good, and it is likely to be from mid-January on (we had lovely hot days in Portugal in December, rain in Spain for the first two weeks in January, and hot,, sunny days 'in Morocco in February), you can spend your days lolling on the beach. When you get tired of relaxing, or if it rains, you can shop fot Portuguese embroidery, Spanish silver and leather or rugs and all kinds of strange and wonderful things in Morocco. Spend your nights at the mavies - even the boring, old ones are funny in a strange language, at the small bars where the locals go, drinking the cheap and excellent Mediterranean Wines, on the beach watching the fishermen bring in and auction off their catch, or in Lagos, on the south coast of Portugal, at the English pub which is run by'a lovely couple from Hong Kong and serves Chinese food. If you want to see the surrounding countryside -- the almond trees and oxen in Port- ugal or the grinding poverty and olive trees .in Spain, rent a car for a day or take a trip on the local bus -- the one that the natives use, not the tourist excur- sion bus --- you will learn as much about the country and its people as you could from a lot of English speaking tour guides. For the hardier types amongst us, who want to get away from the rat race for a year or so and have some money saved, a camping trip to Europe might be the answer. You can't take ad- vantages of cheap excursion air fares if you want to stay longer than three weeks but you can fly Icelandic Airlines from New York to Luxembourg for the cheapest scheduled airline fares available --- about $300'round trip. Better yet join a club which offers charter flights to Europe now and in six months you will be eligible for an astoundingly cheap return fare flight --- at a cost of from $150 to $250. _ Camping sites in Europe are much more numerous than they are here, at the beaches, in the country and in the large cities. They are equipped with hot show- ers, toilets, facilities for cooking and washing (most in the northern countries have laundromats and kitchens) and grocery stores. They are also cheap --- for two of us- and a tent my husband and I paid from 5(4 to $1.50 per Right. If you don't relish spend- ing ten months or so in a tent (it's not all that bad, as long as the weather is good --- and we preferred the independence and privacy of camping to hotels) a camper van, fully equipped with sink, stove and fridge, is the answer. You can take delivery of a new camper bus directly from the Volkswagon factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, at a much lower price than you can buy one here, use it in Europe for a year and then ship it home or sell it overseas. You can make arrangements to rent a van, com- plete with camping equipment in the U.S, or in. Europe. Infor- mation is available from the National Campers and Hikers Association in Buffalo, N.Y. or from the Tourist offices of countries you are planning to visit. England is probably your best bet for negotiating to buy a good used Commer or Ford van-- you speak the language. You can pick one up through newspaper ads or from a dealer if you plan to make England your first stop. The same holds for pur- chase of a second-hand car which can be sold before you leave for home. You can use Europe's excellent network of camp- grounds if you don't have a car or van and plan to hitch-hike or travel by public transpor- tation --- we did it for four months --- but it is difficult as some campgrounds can't be reached easily except by car. Most people who hitch - stay in youth hostels widen are plenti- ful andfairly good in the north but scarce and primitive inNorth Africa and the Mediterranean countries. To use the dorm itory - accommodation the hostels offer for about 75Q a person a night, you have to join the Canadian Hostel Association with a ten dollar membership fee, before you leave. Youth hostellers, and camp- ers without cars, usually carry all their possessions in knapsacks, on their backs. • A good knapsack can be bought at a camping supply store here, or perhaps more. cheaply in England or Germany and will hold about three changes of wash and wear clothing, books, a tooth- brush, soap and towel, and a tent, a small gas stove and pots and plates, if you are camping. Most supplies for camping, in- cluding a tent, sleeping bags and stove can be bought more cheaply in Europe than here. If you can't face up to driving on Europe's congested and some- times dangerous highways, and want to travel for a few months, buy a Eurail Pass, before you leave home. It will entitle you to free travel on all trainsIn Europe for a specified period of time. A Eurail pass is a bargain, how- ever, only if you'll be travelling for a short period and only if you keep moving fairly quickly--- if you unexpectedly find a place you like you can't really stay there for two weeks while your days of free train fare are run- ning out. Train apt bus trans- portation in Europe and, North Africa is a good way to meet local people, to fend for yourself in a foreign environment, and is somewhat cheaper than it is here. but it necessitates that you follow someone else's schedule. You can't stop a train "Al! mks something interest- ing out your window. There are many fantastic hotel bargains in Europe for the adventurous and a guide book like Europe on $5 a Day is a good help in seeking them out. You will also get lots of recom- mendations from fellow travel- lers and from local tourist of- fices 11 you ask. Leave your luggage somewhere so you can wander around a city unencum- bered and find the cheapest and best rooms. None of the rooms will have private bathrooms --- they are rare in Europe except in very expensive hotels but there will almost always be a comfortable, clean bathroom right down the hall. Our hotel room costs ranged from $2 a night for a lovely room with , balcony, two blocks from down- town Madrid to a horrendous $7 for a room with huge eider- down quilts and two breakfasts, in Bonn, Germany. No matter where you stay or how you travel, your first stop upon arrival iri any town should be the tourist office. They will provide you with free maps, sightseeing information, and will ansWer questions about cheap hotels, campsites, the best hitch- hiking route out of town, or almost anything about their country or area. Hitch-hiking can be the best way to really see and understand a foreign country --- you see a lot because you walk a lot and local people usually give you rides and invite you home for meals,. etc. --- but it is a very uncomfortable and insecure way to roam. If you are prepared to stand out beside the road early in the morning not knowing just where you will spend the next night, and to endure personal questions 'from the man who picks you up (first one is always 'Are you married?"), try it. We heard about a girl from Vancouver who had hitch-hiked alone across Canada and was continuing to do so through Europe, but I wouldn't risk it. However, we met several pairs of girls who had hitched thousands of miles without running into any trouble. Couples seem to have the most luck with hitching - -- we had no trouble getting rides in North Africa where traffic was light but found it difficult in Europe where people whiz right past. 'It's frustrating, time consuming and sometimes depressing but, it is definitely the cheapest way to go. Along with hitching, or instead of it, the best way to save money in Europe is to buy and eat the cheap local food specialties. Can- ned meat and tuna is about $1 a tin in North. Africa but beef steak is about 80.0 a pound' and we filled a large paper bag with turnips, carrots and potatoes at an outdoor market in Casablanca for about In Spain oranges anti wine are cheap (along With almost everything else), and Ger- many has black bread and a good selection of canned foods. In Italy eat pasta and in Greece, heavy bread and black olives, along with cheap and delicious restaurant meals of stuffed peppers and tomatoes. Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and France have huge and excellent supermarkets --- we saw about 300 different kinds of cheese in one in Paris. The Danish stores are very expensive and in England groceries are very cheap. Try to keep a budget and record all the money you spend every day --- it's interesting to look at after you get home. Also, once you know your aver- age expenditure per day, you'll know how many days you have left in Europe (i.e. divide ex- penses per day into your remain- ing savings). The record will help you to compare costs of living in the countries you visit as well. you can't go to Europe with- out buying some souvenirs but we decided before we left that it was more important to us to travel farther and stay longer than to load up on more posses- sions. The fact that we had to carry everything we bought on our backs or send it home and pay high postage .charges, was a great deterent to shopping sprees. We went wild twice -- once In Tunis after a fairly grueling two week hitching trip across North Africa (we bought two small hand maAte rugs) and again in Copenhagen where some of the worlds best furniture, glass, wooden' ware and woven r materials are on sale (we bought some presents).' Europe is full o f beautiful things, most of them costing about half of what they'd cost in Canada but if you're on a budget, think before you buy. It all de- pends on your priorities --- do you really want that wrought iron Spanish hardware or would you rather stay in Europe for another week? By combining hitching, camp- ing, train and line travel and the, occasional hotel and youth hostel and by finally buying a 1958 V-W bug in Germany for $162 my husband and I managed to spend less in Europe than we would have in 10 months in the U. S. 16r Canada. We travelled 12,000 miles, always` ate well --- in- cluding really good restaurant meals about twice a month, And were very comfortable most of the time. You caa spend more. or less than we did, and stay for a year or for two weeks, but by going overseas when you want to get away from it all, you can learn 4" a lot about yourself and about the world. "Featuring a complete line of FORD-MERCURY CARS and TRUCKS SPECIAL PRICES NEW & iliED CARS TWO LEFT! 1970 FORD GALAXIES 1966 Chev. Biscayne, 4-door Sedan, low mileage 1968 Meteor Rideau 1964 Ford Galaxie, D.P. 1967 Meteor 4-door D.P. 1967 Belair, low mileage 1965 Chev. Belair, double power, 4-door, 8-cylinder 1966 Grand Prix, 4-door, HT, D.P. 1966 Ford 4-dr. Sedan 1970 Hornet, 2-door, only 4,000 miles, local owner 1968 Volkswagon 1964 Dodge Stationwagon McLAUGHLIN MOTORS FORD - MERCURY DEALER Phone 527-1140