I've been quite busy handling life this past week, but I did manage to get a few things done. (Both for life and for trips.) Anyway, here's what is new this week. I apologize that it is all in list form, but even still maybe you will find a few useful tidbits here and there.
For Trip #1 (October leaf looking):
• decided on a NYC hotel. The one I ended up with was far from my first choice, but my first choices were disappearing like hot cakes. Turns out my husband and I will be in NYC during a big travel weekend. (Or so the hotels seem to think.) Every time I'd research, the prices would sneak up on me. $200s … which ouch, but okay. Then $300s … then $400s. At some point, I was starting to wonder if I could even afford to go. (I probably can't at that price, but what other option do I have?) So, lesson learned. Book as far in advance as possible for hotels.
• Ordered and received Lonely Planet New York & the Mid-Atlantic's Best Trips (Travel Guide) and National Geographic's Four Seasons of Travel: 400 of the World's Best Destinations in Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall for research purposes. I'm getting quite the collection of travel books for someone who never wanted to purchase any since they go out of date so quickly!
• I pulled out my copy of Moon's Road Trip USA to see if any of our drives line up with any of their recommendations. For our drive down from Boston, we will be hitting both the Atlantic Coast drive and the Appalachian Trail. I wish I had seen this before I started booking hotels. While most of the hotels we have booked are cancelable, I'm afraid to start over in research since we only have about a week and a half left to work out our itinerary.
• I considered buying tickets for the Chihuly exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens, but because I'm not sure how long a meandering drive down from Boston to NYC will take, the $56 price tag has me a bit worried. I did get Taste of DC tickets, though. They were free.
• I tried the Seated app, so that I would know how it worked before using it to potentially book restaurants in any of the cities we will be visiting during this road trip. The idea is that you get $15 to use toward Starbucks/Amazon/Uber just for trying out a restaurant and booking reservations in advance. Everything went well, got my giftcard, so now I will just need to figure out how to take advantage of this app.
• Moved all of my images onto a USB drive that plugs into my cell phone. Can't wait to blog about it!
• Used pruvo to track my hotels, so that I will be notified if the price goes down.
For Trip #2 (November in NYC):
• Tried to book a top of the crown Statue of Liberty visit. Turns out they are fully booked until December. :(
For Trip #3 (November in New Orleans):
• umm … nothing?
For Trip #4 (December in ??):
• received an update from Google Flights that my (potential) London flight dropped in price to the $900s. Painful compared to the $500s I was looking at, but better than the $1,100s before the drop. Is it a go?
For Trip #5 (April? 2018 in California):
• figured out which parts of the Pacific Coast Highway were blocked.
• Also learned more about California from someone who actually lives there. #WIN!
Anyway, until next week!
Let me know if you learned anything new in this post or if you have any suggestions (both regarding travel as a general topic as well as for individual places, like New Orleans, for example) for me. I always enjoy learning something new!
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Alternatively, if you are interested in hearing more about something I've mentioned in this post and would like to see a longer blog post on the topic, let me know that as well. I love sharing the tips and tricks I've discovered for booking travel.
