Travel Products and Services

First the offer: Save $100s, Spend $22

Okay, that’s not really a well-written offer, but these are students for chrissake. Here’s the thing though, this is one of the best offers you are going to find if you are an independent traveler. Assuming you are a student, young person, or a teacher (one way or another) you can get one of these cards for $22 and then save a truckload of money using STA Travel.

There is an intriguing new offer I’ve just come across, which could be excellent for first time visitors to the Big Apple - A brand new way to see New York: New York Pass

If you had unlimited time to spare in life and nothing better to do, you could spend all your waking hours exploring travel Web sites and you still wouldn’t find all of them. There are a lot of sites on the Web, some good, some bad and some somewhere in between. The challenge isn’t finding them, of course. The challenge is finding the ones that are useful and good.

One site that I recently stumbled upon that has a lot of potential is Cool Capitals. Its current focus is on four capital cities in Europe – Amsterdam, Antwerp, Vienna and Zurich. In addition to the usual features like being able to search for flights to those cities and in-depth city travel guides, the site has interesting and sometimes random features like cocktail recipes, podcasts and videos. Who doesn’t enjoy a good cocktail recipe to go along with your travel planning?

All of this is presented in a user friendly site with visually pleasing graphics. Even if you aren’t planning on visiting the four cities on the site, you might find it entertaining. If nothing else, you can add another travel site to the ever growing number worth checking out.

The Internet has revolutionized the way in which we find airline tickets, hotels and vacation packages. Back in the old days, you had to trudge on over to your local travel agent and wait for them to come up with the prices on your various options. It was time consuming and often you ended getting deals that benefited the travel agents more than they benefited you.

These days anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can be their own travel agent. If you are reading this post, I’m going to bet that you have booked a flight or a hotel or made some other kind of travel arrangement online before. In fact, you might even be an expert.

Regardless if you have booked hundreds of tickets online or if you are still new to the game, there are some things that you should know about how to best utilize the various search sites. If you learn their ins and outs, you can save time and money. Here are some thorough guides to how to search the most popular travel sites.

How to search…..

Expedia
Travelocity
Orbitz
Priceline
Kayak
Sidestep

Who hasn’t had this happen before? You scour the Web to find the best price on an airline flight and you purchase the ticket. A couple of days later you happen to find out that the same ticket on the same flight is being sold for $100 less or $100 more. How is that possible? How can you make sense of it all?

On the surface, airline ticket pricing seems to be an exercise in randomness. Airlines seemingly change their prices at a whim. This leads to no source of frustration for us, the traveler. All we care about is getting to our destination for the best possible price.

The randomness of it all is, in fact, not so random. At least according to the folks who put together the fascinating website – Farecast. Using historical data and up to the minute trending information, they are able to predict when the price of an airline ticket will go up and when it will go down. They claim that their predications are 75% accurate. Even if they turn out to be less accurate, having a tool to help make sense of it all could come in handy for those of us who obsess over airline ticket prices.

The average high temperature in Anchorage, Alaska in December is 23.7 degrees. That sounds brutal until you learn that the average high temperature in January is 22.2 degrees and the average low temperature is 9.3 degrees. You have to be a hearty soul to appreciate that kind of weather or someone who wouldn’t mind a free trip to a beautiful part of the world.

You can experience Anchorage in the winter by entering and winning a contest that offers two free tickets from Alaska Airlines, three night’s accommodations in Alaska’s largest city and passes to the Tour of Anchorage ski marathon in early March.

Lest you think that Anchorage’s residents spend all of their time in the winter months huddled around the fireplace, there are actually quite a few public events like the Tour of Anchorage that occur during the coldest times of the year. The most famous is the Iditarod Sled Dog Race which pits humans and canine friends against the elements. There’s also Alpine skiing, ice fishing, snowmobiling and ample opportunities to view the Northern Lights. I also have it on good authority that Anchorage has a nifty little nightlife with ample spots to warm your insides with some tasty beverages.

The power is in your hands, fellow traveler. Looking for information about airport delays, traffic and parking, taxi lines, and whether or not the Cinnabon is fresh at your local airport? Consider using the new traveler update service from Orbitz.

Traveler Update is a new service which invites travelers
to share real-time information about the nation’s top airports. Additionally, the site includes historical security wait times from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), up-to-the-minute flight information from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), OrbitzTLC air traffic alerts and other reliable traffic and weather information.

This has the potential to be a very cool thing if there are enough reliable contributors providing updates that are both timely and accurate. One incentive to get you involved with the site is to offer free first-class airline vouchers to the “Top 100 Contributors” in October. Get contributing today and you might just walk away with a free airplane ticket to go along with your long security line waits and your stale Cinnabons.

Ask the average person to start naming the countries in Central America and there is a good chance that they will miss Belize. There is a reason for this. It is a small country that has rarely ever been in the news. It is not a country that has undergone conflict and outside of the occasional hurricane, it has been largely spared from the disasters that have hit other countries in the region.

Belize also may escape the mind because linguistically it is different from the rest of Central America. A former British colony (it was called British Honduras, for those scoring at home), the official language of Belize is English, although many people speak a form of English called Belizean Creole.

While you may not associate Belize with Central America, chances are you have heard that it is a pretty decent place to visit. It has excellent beaches, world class scuba diving and an ex-pat community that is seemingly growing by the second. Given its proximity to the United States, it is also very easy to reach for a short little get away.

Airfare to Belize often depends on the time of the year, but you can usually find a deal if you are persistent. You can also find loads of great information about what to do, where to stay and what to eat by visiting the handy Belize Travel Guide.

Imagine what it must have been like to have been the first person to slap some wood on his feet and to propel himself down a side of a mountain. The thrill must have been something. According to the experts at Wikipedia, there’s evidence that skiing existed as far back as 5,000 years ago. That means for 5,000 years people have been shredding powder, running into trees and tearing up knees all in the name of the ski adrenaline rush.

The sport has progressed a lot since those ancient times. Heck, skiers probably didn’t even wear neon colors until at least the 1970s. The weren’t even snowboards around when Richard Nixon was president.

We’ve come a long way. The only problem is that with technological progress there come costs. Namely the price of ski lift tickets. Resorts across the country are charging an arm and a leg to allow you to hurl yourself down their mountains.

United Vacations is here to help. They have some excellent vacation packages on ski resorts throughout North America — resorts like Aspen, Banff, Jackson Hole and Lake Tahoe.

Ski Vacations
Ski vacations on sale. Don’t forget the lift tickets and ski rentals! Book now

The physical landscape of South America is like a tent. It is steep at the top and falls off quickly to the sides. The Andes are the defining feature of the continent. The mountains shape the way people live, they shape weather patterns and they will shape the way you will travel through South America.

BootsnAll has an outstanding 12-day Amazon to Andes adventure tour that offers a fascinating glimpse into both highland and lowland Peru. The trip begins and ends in the capital Lima. From there it takes you to the heights of Cuzco and on to the famed Inca Trial for 4 days. It is a challenging walk but the reward is experiencing Machu Picchu, as well as what it is like for the people living in some of the highest elevation communities in the world.

Just when you get your altitude legs, the tour takes you the simply amazing Amazon jungle. You will explore a jungle that holds an amazing amount of biodiversity. It is truly an animal lover’s dream, especially if you are into birding.

If you have ever wanted to get a quick, but meaningful taste of South America, this trip is an excellent option for you. Led by experienced guides, you will not only have the opportunity to interact with local people, but you will also get to know like minded independent travelers.