Travel Tips

In addition, if you have some travel tips you would like to add, please do so by writing your comments on this page.  We are always open to suggestions and would like to hear what you have to say.

Please feel free to use the links in this article for your own travel arrangements. Through the course of our travels these websites and services have been invaluable to us. Make sure to bookmark this page and return to our site whenever you want to make your own travel plans.

Thanks

Travelocity, Orbitz, Cheaptickets and Expedia are the places I find the best Caribbean deals.  Every once in a while you can find a decent deal to Europe or Asia.   For Europe though, I typically look at www.1800flyeurope.com for cheaper airfare.  I do set up fare alerts on Travelocity, but it’s really about going to these sites a couple of months or more before you plan on going somewhere and searching every day or so (new deals get created frequently).

For the Caribbean and Mexico, you can sometimes find last minute deals a few days or a week before you want to travel.  For example, last December I had some “use it or lose it” vacation days from my job.  So I quickly looked on Travelocity and LastMinute and found a 5 day air and hotel package deal to Puerto Rico for about $600.  I found the deal on a Tuesday and we left on that Thursday (from 30 degrees here in DC to the sunny 90’s in PR)

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4. How We Do So Many.
Bouncing from country to country while in Europe is cool way to get 2 or 3 vacations in one.  You can find cheap flights between European countries, sometimes as low as $5 + tax and fuel if you time it right and purchase months in advance.  (That’s right I said $5.00)  These are no frills airlines and they fly into a limited number of airports.  Also, remember flights between most European countries are only about an hour, since European countries are so small.  Check out www.ryanair.com , www.easyjet.com or any European airline like airfrance.com.  So you can get your flight from home by using the methods I listed above, then book your intra-Europe flights using ryanair, easyjet or another European airline.   For example, we went to Paris, France in 2006.  But once we were there we took a one hour flight to Madrid, Spain and spent a few days there.  When we go to Europe this year, we’ll probably fly from Dulles to Barcelona, Spain then take an intra-Europe flight to Venice, Italy and maybe even Morocco (some intra-Europe flights go to Morocco since it’s so close to Spain).

6. How We Find Inexpensive Accomodations.
Hostel is not a bad word.  Many no frills hotels in Europe and Asia will list themselves on sites like www.hostelworld.com , www.hostelbookers.com , and www.otel.com (no “h” in “otel.com“) even though most people wouldn’t consider them to be what is typically thought of as a hostel.  Also, what’s good about those web sites is you can read reviews and ratings of many people who have stayed at the hotels to gage the quality.  Another invaluable place to read reviews is www.tripadvisor.com .  These hotels don’t have things like room service or other frills, but they are clean and safe and sometimes have character and charm.  Plus, when I am traveling, I just need somewhere decent to lay my head.  The rest of the time I’m out experiencing the city, sites, food, culture, and nightlife.  I spend around $30 to $40 a night in a city where the typical hotel is around $100 or more.   If you use those web sites though, read carefully to make sure it is a place where you have your own room and bathroom (usually labeled as “en-suite”) and not a typical hostel.