The New York Times reported last night that fully vaccinated American tourists will be permitted to travel to all 27 European Union member countries this summer, according to an interview conducted with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

Related: Tips for traveling to France during Covid-19

No official timeline has been announced, but one could be coming soon — especially as “summer” officially begins in less than two months. According to the news report, it seems likely an announcement will take place once a vaccination certificate becomes available that is acceptable to both E.U. and American authorities.

According to the article:

“These discussions are continuing, officials in Brussels said, and it is possible that a low-tech solution would be used in the near future to enable people to travel freely on the basis of vaccination. For example, a traveler to Europe could get an E.U. vaccine-certificate equivalent on arrival after showing a bona fide certificate issued by his or her own government. The hope, officials said, is that this step would soon be unnecessary as government-issued vaccine certificates issued by foreign governments would be acceptable and readable in the European Union, and vice versa.”

Read the full article

So what does this mean?

A number of questions remain, all of which we’ll be following with keen interest:

• When will this new policy go into effect? Unknown.
• What about unvaccinated travelers who can show a recent negative COVID test result? The statement from the EU doesn’t address them, and seems unlikely to include them.
• What about children under 16, who are unable to get the vaccine? As children under 16 years old are also not given any of these vaccines in Europe, it seems unlikely that unvaccinated American children would also be excluded, but again, this has not been clarified.
• Will this policy be reciprocated? Will vaccinated European travelers be permitted to travel to the US? Unknown — we’re waiting to hear from US officials on this.

What can you do to get ready?

Get vaccinated: And obviously, if you want to have the chance to go to Europe this summer, get your shots!

Passports: Check your passport’s expiration date. If it has been sitting in that drawer for 13 months, you are going to want to make sure you are ready to go when the world opens up and your feel ready to travel.

Book those flights: We’ve already booked tickets to France for August, because airfare was low and the tickets fully changeable. We’d recommend booking flights before they get any more expensive. However, make sure that they’re able to be changed without penalty.

The post European Union to allow vaccinated American travelers this summer appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

Mainstream versus the offbeat

All well and good, if you are staring at the Mona Lisa or the Taj Mahal. But we wonder whether Google Goggles will be quite so adept at recognising a particular spot on the Russian steppes, the Hungarian puszta or on a remote stretch of Scottish coastline. Catching the essence of landscape, and indeed of most places we visit on our European travels, is about more than merely accessing a gigabyte of data on major landmarks.

What makes a place tick?

Guidebooks are certainly going through a tough time – facing competition from the more critical travel websites. The more innovative publishers are reinventing their products for a web-wise generation. But appreciating a particular place (or even a whole country) needs more than just facts, data and listings.

So it is interesting to note that while the sales of print guidebooks decline, narrative travel writing has gone from strength to strength. The reading public evidently has a considerable appetite for well written prose that really helps us understand what makes a place tick. Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital gave us a completely new take on the M25 freeway that encircles London, just as Alice Albinia’s Empires of the Indus introduced us to 2000 miles of river and 5000 years of history, while Ian Thomson’s The Dead Yard opened our eyes to Jamaica.

The spirit of landscape

We still think it worth browsing a guidebook or two before leaving home. And casting an eye over some travel websites for information on accommodation and to get a feel for the range of reactions to a place is always helpful.

But for really getting under the skin of a region or country, some well chosen narrative travel writing is essential. Travel through southern Russia without a guidebook if you really must, but don’t so much as even think of venturing to the region without having read Philip Marsden’s The Spirit-Wrestlers. Here, we think, even Google Goggles might have met its match.

The post Google Goggles and the Future of the Guidebook appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.