Australia Accomodation

sparkle_berry

Hi everyone,

Me and my finace are travelling to Australia in April for our honeymoon. We are staying in sydney for a couple of weeks and then travelling to the barrier reef and Melbourne. The plan is to drive from Melbourne back to Sydney.

We havent booked our accomodation yet and was planning to do this over the internet. There are so many websites, can anyone recommend any good websites to book hotels/holiday apartments in australia. Where are the best areas to stay in Sydney and Melbourne.

Also are there any online forums specifically for australia where we chat to people who have alreasy been.

Thanks in advance.

Susie

researcher

Hi there,

You'll have a wonderful time I'm sure. We loved Australia and plan to return for new year 2006/7.

When we were there we were recommended www.wotif.com for hotels, and I've used them for Australia, Thailand and UK, but I'm not sure if they're more of a last minute type booking site - we were always booking a few days in advance - not weeks.

We first booked Sydney hotels when we arrived at the airport - they have a brilliant local government agency selling last minute accommodation in the top hotels - we were paying about £70 a night for 5* in the City/Rocks. Darling Harbours really nice too.

In Melbourne we stayed in St Kilda - which is on the beach rather than in the City - and we loved it - a lovely restaurant on the beach is Donovans, do give it a try.

We drove between Sydney - Melbourne, along the Hume Highway (this is the inland rather than the costal route) - if you do this route I can recommend a couple of amazing restaurants around the border between NSW and Victoria, and the hotel we stayed in had a really fabulous jaccuzi - (we paid about £50 a night.)

Get Loney Planets guide from the library - it's a good starting point.

:xmassmile

sparkle_berry

Thanks for your reply.

We might ry booking the hotel's in sydney at the airport £70 for a 5 star sounds good value, we wanted to stay in a room with a view of the harbour bridge for a couple of nights.

How long did it take to drive from Sydney to Melbourne? We were estimating 2/3 nights.

researcher

We drove Sydney to Wodonga (this is the boarder between NSW and Victoria - and well worth a couple of nights) - some lovely vineyards and situated on the Murray River. - Then we drove Wodonga - Melbourne. Each leg is about 300ish miles. The roads brilliant - but DO NOT SPEED - we did 70 mph all the way, and only 2 cars passed us.

Oh - looked at wotif, and it is a lastminute website only - ignore prices right now as they're nothing like April will be!

If you decide to drive the coast route you'll probably need two stops rather than the one.

Party_Animal

I would check out Virtualtourist.com. I find it very useful.