Shopping Down Under
The Australian shopping experience offers a vast range of both imported and locallymade goods.
Local products include the inevitable toy koalas kangaroos and wombats. But many local fashion designers are making names for themselves. In tune with the laid back ‘Down Under’ lifestyle Aussie designs tend to be more casual and comfortable than those from Europe. Notable local brands include Sass and Bide Carla Zampatti Jag and Adele Palmer.
Locallymined opals are one of the best buys in Australia but you really need to know what you’re doing when shopping for any kind of gemstone.
And of course if you’re after serious Aboriginal art or just a boomerang or didgeridoo Australia’s the place to go.
Shopping In Sydney
Downtown Sydney is home to the standard retails outlets. For department stores the two major names are David Jones and Myer. David Jones is the largest selling goods ranging from the latest fashions to designer furniture.
For more individual wares you have to head to Paddington Glebe and Newtown home to distinctive boutiques showcasing the threads of local designers along with jumble shops and markets for pennypinchers. Oxford Street is the domain of myriad fashionable clothing outlets featuring the creations of the city’s most avantgarde designers.
A must visit is the Queen Victoria Building which houses a delightful Victorian shopping arcade offering four levels of male and female fashion items in 200 boutiques.
For shoppers who want to spend some time in Sydney there is a wide selection of Sydney hotels
Shopping In Melbourne
Melbourne is acknowledged to be Australia’s shopping capital. It is home to grand fashion houses department stores fascinating souvenir shops and glorious arcades.
The arcades are one of Melbourne’s treasures. The finest is the Block Arcade home to over 30 businesses such as the historic Hopetoun Tearooms. Another gem is the Royal Arcade and don’t miss the massive Melbourne Central shopping complex between Latrobe and Lonsdale streets.
Other Melbourne shopping attractions include South Yarra featuring Australian fashions and Toorak Road for highpriced brand names such as Gucci.
For the more thrifty shopper head to one of the thousands of retail shops and factory outlets. They’re spread around Melbourne especially on Bridge Road and Swan Street. Here you can pick up designer clothes perhaps last season’s top picks for just pennies on the dollar.
For shoppers who want to spend some time in Melbourne there is a wide selection of Melbourne hotels
Shopping In Brisbane
Australia’s thirdlargest city boasts a broad array of shopping outlets gracing its tropical landscape. Brisbane’s shopping scene is centered on Queen Street Mall which houses around 500 retail outlets.
Queensland’s own fashion creations are on sale at the Brisbane Arcade. The nearby Broadway on the Mall and MacArthur Central offer a wide range of gifts and accessories and designer labels and Swiss watches.
But for an authentic Brisbane shopping scene you have to head to one of the city’s many markets. Valley Markets is the place for alternative and retro fashion. It’s open on weekends from 8 am to 4 pm On Friday nights the South Bank Art and Craft Markets come to life with its stocks of handicrafts.
For shoppers who want to spend some time in Brisbane there is a wide selection of Brisbane hotels.
About the writer: Alistair White has been in the travel industry for over 20 years and is the founder and CEO of Cheaper Than Hotels. Cheaper Than Hotels offers cheap Sydney hotels and cheap Melbourne hotels .
Restaurant Accommodation
Before deciding if youre going to accept reservations of a big group for a Friday or Saturday night business try to check your records first of the history of reservations you usually receive. If you dont keep a record of this make sure you do starting now.
The point here is that you need to find out how much percentage each person from a large group can contribute to your bottom line during these times especially that your restaurant can get fullpacked then compare them to the smaller groups of reservation you receive during the same time. By doing this youd get a concrete estimation of how big your chances are going to be in earning more if you accept groups of 2 or 4 persons through walkins or reservations. If this is the case you can now turn down the reservation for the larger group.
Dont think just because a large group of diners who want to have reservation for your restaurant could already mean good profit. Make sure that you conduct a study of these matters before you make your final verdict. After all what youre trying to do is for the overall benefit for your income.
The opposite thing may happen as well. You could be expecting that a large group makes a reservation on a Friday or Saturday night and yet you get reservations for 2 or 4 persons. All you have to do is to take chances. You can never be too sure of what could happen on a night like this but if you continue to keep your restaurant records youll realize that it would be okay not to rearrange your seating arrangement and yet earn extra by utilizing what you already have in your restaurant.
About the writer: For More Article Visit :: http://www.thearticleinsiders.com/
Rail Europe For The Student Traveler
It has been a timehonored tradition for the North American university grad to leave his sheltered nest and seek the unknown in a distant land.
Unfortunately tradition also lends way to clich.
The early twenties book smart grad are filled with an ambition to add some life experience to his new set of professional letters. He sits in a dockside caf eating hometown food with French provincial names as he writes into a leatherbound booklet some deep insights that he assumes are original. He dreams of having a torrid love affair with some local peasant girl but settles instead for swapping email addresses with some Canadians doing the exact same thing. As entertaining as this prospect seems it was not my wish. I wanted to carve out my own adventure and in Europe there is no better way than by train.
The European rail system has been for years secondtonone for accessibility comfort and with Rail Europe affordability. There are a variety of Rail Europe passes for different prices that can get you anywhere you wish in little time and from city center to city center. North Americans must purchase the Rail Europe tickets before departing Europe you can’t get them in Europe and well in advance of their trip and in certain countries the passes are valid on ferries and riverboats. The passes are easy to use and if taken advantage of fully are cheaper than most other forms of transportation. Best of all is that trains can get you to remote areas that you would otherwise miss. For the budgetminded the night excursions or hotel trains save you hotel rooms so that you awake the next day in a new country!
Copenhagen
I landed in Copenhagen and got immediately roped into the standard tourist sites Tivoli Gardens the Royal Palace etc.
I saw an incredible exhibit of Danish design at the National Art Kunst Gallery and I took a bike ride through an area called Christiania an area started by a group of Danes in the 1960s looking for free love free drugs and free rent and it hasnt changed much since. I was here when I was thirteen years old staying with a cousin. Since the government has made an attempt to clean up Christiania by taking out most of the drugs but the general atmosphere remains. Old military buildings painted in bright colors are home to all sorts of the local free thinkers from vagrants to artists to very accomplished architects. The tour ended at the National Library also called the Diamond because of its seemingly transparently beautiful aesthetics. It is a remarkable example of the old world class of a European city half of the building is the original building of the National Library and the clean lines and simple concepts of modern Danish design that act to seemingly tell a story with nothing but light.
Munich
As wonderful of a city as Copenhagen is the tourist route begins to lose its luster and the rails are calling me East. I’ve been to Germany before so I wasnt interested in staying for too long but the food and beer would be a shame to miss yet another perk of train travel. Local trains can always be caught if you simply feel like ending up in a small town outside Munich ordering a heaping lunch and a few giant steins of local brew and making your way out the same day. Needless to say between Frankfurt and the Hungarian border I was full comfortably brewedup and happy as the beautiful sites of central Europe flew by.
As can be expected this type of life can take its toll on a persons ability to remain conscious. By chance when my body and mind were screaming for sleep I happened upon a rather quiet train car. In fact at one point a person was asked to keep the noise down behind me. I thought there was going to be some sort of movie starting that necessitated such silent attention until I realized that some of the train cars are specifically designated for the lazy kind of traveler that I felt like being. They are quiet cars and I will snore my praises of them for years to come.
Budapest
A city full of history incredible architecture and beautiful women. As you walk around the city you get a definite stench of the former socialist society coupled with an obvious existence of capitalist growth. The city sits on the banks of the Danube. The Pest side is where you would find a much more builtup city center with malls and shopping areas not to mention the late night venues. You can imagine my desire to visit the other side of the river.
The other side of the river is the Buda part of the city are you picking up on the basis of the name yet?. A little quieter and lush Buda contains some beautiful homes and sites. The Gelhert Hill marked by a statue that can be reached by hiking paths offers an incredible view of the city. I was lucky enough to meet a lovely local named Janka and I was invited to a dinner party. Hungarians are often seen as slightly less personable than some western European counterparts. This can be chalked up to a very dry sense of humor. I can attest however that this is not the case at all. After a great homecooked meal and a few cocktails in a quaint apartment in the hills filled with great people including Zigga who I knew for a few days and offered me a lift to the train station and of course the beautiful Janka; I would say that kindness and generosity are staples in the social diet of Hungarians. They also have an uncanny ability to have a good time
About the writer: www.toursguide.com
