This Pole star is a shining example of historic low-key tourism
Simon Calder on off-the-beaten-track destinations, medical insurance for pre-existing cases, buying foreign currency in advance, and fees for changing airline tickets
Q An under-the-radar city in Europe, please. Somewhere that’s thriving and is well worth visiting – but people haven’t yet noticed.
Jane T
A My thoughts go straight to Poland. Krakow, Gdansk and Warsaw are well known and justifiably popular; some say Krakow is suffering from overtourism. But there are plenty of other cities that are flourishing, each with a deep history and many good places to eat, drink and stay. They also have excellent air links with the UK at good fares, particularly during the winter.
Top of my list: the central Polish city of Lodz. It has a stupendously long main street, flanked by impressive buildings. One of these is the superbly refurbished Grand Hotel, probably the best I have stayed in this year. As Poland is the land of luxury for less, you can book a chic double for around £130, including a sumptuous buffet breakfast in the former ballroom.
The many attractions include Manufaktura, a former factory reinvented as a leisure destination with some outstanding restaurants. Even the Starbucks is spectacular. The tourist office provides maps for rewarding self-guided walks around the city. Elsewhere, the Jewish cemetery is poignant and beautiful.
Also in central Poland – and easily combinable with Lodz, thanks to a two-hour train link between them – is Poznan. The main square is a joy, and the river provides a sense of tranquillity. Going northeast and northwest respectively, Bydgoszcz and Szczecin are hard to spell but easy to enjoy, and also offer excellent value and a friendly welcome to winter weekenders.
The other stand-out cities are both Balkan capitals: Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Tirana in Albania. Each has a “partner city” that is very different and reasonably accessible. For Sarajevo, it is Mostar; for Tirana, Durres. Both contrast sharply with the capitals and are good add-ons for a long weekend.
Q I want to travel to Venice in January, a time of year you have previously recommended. However, a close relative in the UK has terminal cancer. I want to be sure that, should she take a turn for the worse, I am covered for possible short-notice cancellation or having to come home mid-trip. Can you recommend a company for this, please?
Name supplied
A I am sorry to hear about your relative’s condition. In general, travel insurance covers cancellation and coming home early if a close family member falls ill if it is an unforeseen event. But when a condition is already known then it is more complicated.
You should be able to buy a suitable policy from a specialist insurer such as AllClear, InsureandGo or Staysure. But in cases involving the deterioration in the health of a close relative with a medical condition, an insurer will may only determine after the event whether or not you are covered for cancellation or curtailment of the trip. Typically, the insurer will say such a claim is covered if the relative’s doctor is prepared to state that at the date you booked your trip, there was no substantial likelihood of a sudden deterioration to such a degree that you would need to cancel a trip or end it early. Only when and if the doctor confirms will your claim be met.
Were I in these unfortunate circumstances I would not start out along the road of travel insurance. Instead, book late. In January a week should be quite sufficient – and personally I would leave it until just a couple of days ahead. From the London airports, British Airways Holidays has excellent late deals using its scheduled flights for city breaks.
I recognise that not everyone will feel comfortable with this approach. If you prefer to book earlier and the worst happens, approach the airline/travel company/accommodation provider. It may be that they will take a compassionate view of the circumstances if you need to cancel or curtail your holiday, for example allowing you to fly home early without penalty or refunding the money for unused accommodation. But this cannot be relied upon.
Q You have reported on the gradually strengthening value of sterling. Should I buy currency now for my new year ski trip to France and a holiday in the US next May to lock in?
Philippa H
A Earlier this month the pound reached a two-year high against both the US dollar and the euro. Although sterling has slipped back a little, you can still hope to get €1.18 or $1.27 for each £1. Relatively speaking, those rates are more favourable than they have been since the overnight collapse following the Brexit vote. You could acquire some now as insurance against a further slump. Personal finance experts often say that a good way to plan your holiday spending is to buy perhaps half of your expected spending now, and then the remainder close to departure. This is a form of currency hedging – or, if you prefer, speculation – but I am not buying at those rates. To put things in perspective, the last time I bought on the basis that the pound was in such good shape that it surely couldn’t last was in 2007, shortly before the financial crash, when I was getting $2 for each £1. I imagine we will never be quite back to those levels, but $1.27 still feels on the low side.
You can, in any case, improve the odds in your favour by shopping around. When buying currency, it helps to be in London – where companies like Thomas Exchange and Currency Online Group offer keen rates – but you can also use their postal service to deliver cash. The extra charge is around £10, which on a large transaction of, say, £500, you can typically make back compared with local options.
Plastic and payments by phone have spread far and wide, so when paying abroad ensure you have a card that does not add a foreign transaction fee. These include all First Direct cards, Halifax Clarity and Chase – which also has a 1 per cent cashback feature.
Q You wrote a week or two ago about mistakes when booking flights. My girlfriend booked from London to Malaga with British Airways, paying £165. Unfortunately, she booked the wrong date. My girlfriend realised her error five days after booking the ticket. BA customer services said it would cost £90 to change. I understand that British Airways is a commercial enterprise. But in my view, such high fees against an already pricey ticket are excessive and show a lack of respect for customers. Further, just 24 hours to amend tickets free of charge is very short, especially for a flight which is over two months away. What do you think?
Dean I
A British Airways is particularly generous towards customers who buy direct from the ba.com website, allowing a full refund within 24 hours; you must phone customer services to cancel and receive your money back. Clearly, if you wake up to your mistake (as I have done) beyond this deadline, you are faced with the standard charges.
While it’s so annoying to make an expensive mistake I think an extra £90 is a pretty good result: budget airlines typically charge around £50 plus any difference in fare, which can quickly rise to a total of £90. The alternative would have been to see if any airline had a flight from a London airport for less than the change fee; she could then have recouped at least the £13 in air passenger duty from British Airways. But she would also have lost the very generous two-piece cabin baggage allowance that BA offers to all passengers.
To answer your point about a lack of respect: I don’t agree, I’m afraid. Aviation is ferociously competitive, thankfully – going back three decades, you would not have been able to find a fare of £165 to Malaga on BA. One way that airlines can afford to offer decent fares is to apply some fairly strict conditions. Yes, they sometimes do feel more like a penalty than a change fee, but I am prepared to tolerate that in order to benefit from low fares.
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