Pack Up Your Troubles

Plotting a short break away from Networker Island is always a bit of fun.  Surfing the waves of the web world is not without its perils however, and so a small number of sites have proved remarkably helpful at this adventurous time.

For a bit of fun, try popping ‘Madrid’ into Google. 310 million solutions present themselves.  Excellent.  You could start with the Wikipedia page on Spain’s capital city.  Or maybe Spain’s official tourism website would be the right place to begin? Or you could begin somewhere else completely.  For a well structured jumping-in point for web searches, have a look at Mahalo, the human-powered search engine.  Here’s their page on Madrid. All of a sudden, the skies begin to clear…

Next stop, flights and hotels, so forgive me if I’m telling you about three places you use all of the time.  Skyscanner is a handy comparison site for multiple airlines, and LateRooms is a bit of a goldmine for last minute bargains.  For hand-picked, characterful hotels, you could do a lot worse than rummage around on Splendia. 

22 millon people have used TripAdvisor this week, and it’s hard to deny that it’s a great place for checking that the hotel you’re about to book hasn’t been panned by the past thirty reviewers.  As it turns out, the very best advice I received came from much closer to home.  The site which yielded the best advice of all?  Facebook.  One ‘status update’ (that small little box which you fill in to say what you’re doing) was enough to fill a couple of notebook pages of top tips.  No sooner was I ‘looking for great places to go and things to do in Madrid’, than helpful suggestions were landing in my inbox.  One list of a dozen amazing recommendations was from a good friend, Gilly, who I’d forgotten had lived in Madrid for 2 years.  Another terrific compiliation came from a recent colleague, Yuri, for whom it is her home city. 

So next time you’re plotting an escape, and as you gaze down your list of 310 million solutions and your tips from 22 million fellow travellers; just imagine;  the answers may be closer than you think.