London! (The itinerary!)

We're going to London later this month! I'm so excited!

Air New Zealand had some amazing round trip fares for direct flights out of Los Angeles to London, so we jumped on the opportunity to visit two friends that are living there. It's been over a year since I've seen SD, and it's been over FIVE years since I've seen CH! I've never flown Air New Zealand before, but so far it's been a great experience with them - they have a really, truly fantastic customer service line, are friendly and never rude, and gave us free London Passes with the purchase of our tickets! The London Pass is going to come in handy, too, with line jumping and free entry to a ton of attractions. 

So, what do we plan on doing? 

Nothing, and everything.

I want at least 1 day of this trip to be dedicated to not having any plans. In the other two trips I've taken this year - New York and the Wild Wild (Mid)West, our days were packed to the gills with stuff to do. Must see this, must do that, must eat here. So this trip? Not a whole lot of that. I want some quality time with BF. I want some really fun, casual times with our friends. And I want to actually be able to soak in a true idea of what London is like!

There are, of course, things I want to see - Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, the London Tower and Tower Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral, Harrods, the rugby museum, the bridges. Maybe Windsor Castle. Maybe the Chislehurst Caves. A coworker told me that the Soane Museum can't be missed. There's a DaVinci Code tour that looks my inner nerd thinks sounds awesome.  And there are bike tours and boat tours and canal tours and seven new attractions... the list goes on and on. 

On the top of my "musts" list - afternoon tea! I love, love, love tea, and I feel like it's a quintessential thing to do while visiting London. Not sure where we'll end up, but I'll be sure to post about that later! 

And someone on a TripAdvisor recommended this "marvelously cheap" outing for visitors: "Take the Docklands Light Railway from Bank station in the direction of Lewisham. Get off at Island Gardens and walk through the historic pedestrian tunnel under the Thames. Pop out in Greenwich and stroll around - perhaps eating a picnic in the park or going to the Maritime Museum (free)." It sounds good to me! 

All I want out of this trip is great escape - good, relaxing time with BF and my friends, and to feel completely NOT stressed when we get home. And I think we've got a pretty good plan (or, non plan?) to make that happen!

So, have any of you been to London? Is there anything out there that we shouldn't miss?

Wild Wild (Mid)West: Bozeman, Montana

Finally, I'm getting around to writing about our trip to Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota!

We started the day off super early, as the only direct flight from LA to Bozeman the day we flew was at 8am. As per our habit when flying out of LAX, we left early enough to hit Randy's Donuts on the way - it's the best donut place in LA, hands down. Yeah, that's right, I said it. 

 The coconut donuts from Randy's Donuts are the best EVER!

In the works...

I've been feeling the travel bug lately - like crazy.

And, I'm happy to say that I've got not one but TWO trips in the works now!

The first is a super quick, overnight trip to San Diego for our anniversary next week. We're going to spend to go down, see BF's aunt and uncle, check out the museum where BF's uncle has some items on display, and spend the night in my favorite part of San Diego - the Gaslamp District!

I booked our hotel today, and it was awesome because I used my Hotels.com Welcome Rewards credit towards our hotel - so we'll be paying less than $100 for a night! The Welcome Rewards program is pretty cool - you book 10 nights in a hotel through them, and you get 1 night free (based on the average you spend on the other nights)! We decided to splurge a bit and booked a more "luxury" hotel, so the credit went towards the total, then we paid the balance. Works for me!

The second trip is one I've been daydreaming about for years - New York City! I've been traveling for years, have been to four continents and lord knows how many countries, heck, I've even lived abroad... but I've never been to New York. The closest I've come was our East Coast Road Trip from a few years back when we drove on the outskirts of New York on our way from Boston to Virginia. And now, my opportunity has finally arrived!

M is going to be in New York for work, and I found a round trip flight for $240 (American Airlines, JetBlue and Virgin America ALL had this fare) - so I immediately booked it. I'll be there for 5 nights, and the best part is we won't have to pay for hotels! The first three nights are covered through her work, and then we'll stay with my friend for the last two nights! I can't think of a better way to see NY - a great mix between visiting friends and working.

What trips do you have coming up that you're excited for?

A weekend wedding in Las Vegas

Back in October 2011, BF & I went to Las Vegas for one of my best friends' wedding.

It was a quick, but memorable, trip - BF had never been, and it had been over 7 years for me. Neither of us are huge fans of the desert. We don't really gamble, we don't drink all that much, and neither of us are keen on crowds. But SdlTC (gosh, even her initials are a mouthful!) was getting married there, so there we would be!

Awesome view of the strip from a club at the Palms!

In the end, the wedding and surrounding events were awesome and fantastic, but our stay in Vegas wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Why you should never, ever book with Spirit Airlines

Otherwise known as "Why Spirit Airline sucks balls," or "Why I hope Spirit Airlines goes out of business."

Amazing photo borrowed from Awesomely Luvvie, yet another blogger who had a terrible experience. 

Why the TSA sometimes rocks the house.

I have a story to share with you that renewed my faith in the TSA as a security agency.

A friend of mine recently took a weekend trip and had a really unfortunate experience with the TSA at her local airport that was later rectified in a great way. (I won't say which airport because that wouldn't be nice, would it?)

Here's the gist of her experience.

Know your airline's luggage restrictions!

Now that we finally have our plane tickets for our Europe trip this summer, I've been changing my focus to other aspects of our trip. Our luggage has been a big one for me - I had been trying to figure out if there was a way I could possibly pack for a two week vacation (including a wedding) in two different countries and just have a carry on. I'm pretty much to the point of admitting that's not going to happen, so now I'm focusing on the logistics of having to check a bag.

Europe 2011? BOOKED!

We booked our flights!

It's officially official - we've got our tickets for the trip! And while expensive, we found a deal that included the flight to Ireland, the flight from Dublin to Rome, and the flight home from Italy.

Our trip includes four nights in Ireland!

Hmm...

A good friend of mine passed along an article as a comment on my last post that got me stressing a little about when to buy our plane tickets for this summer.

This Jaunted article warns about ticket prices going up exponentially because of rising fuel costs.

Now the economy is slowly recovering, and so oil prices are threatening to shoot back up. Oil import costs have skyrocketed roughly 300% over the last few months, and of course those costs get passed on to the companies that use fuel, at which point they get passed on to the rest of us. In the airline industry that means not just higher ticket prices, but also higher luggage fees and—just to make up for lost revenue—higher penalties.

Hmm. I think that we may have to get our plane tickets sooner rather than later at this point!

Ticket price puzzle: Part 4

Wow, just like that a whole month has gone by!

After the crazy holidays, I'm back in full planning mode for our trip! I can't believe it's already just 6 months away - time flies when you're trying to save money, no?

I'm changing it up a bit for this round - I'm going to use our actual dates, and I'm going to add in a few options I was thinking about today - going to Ireland before the wedding in Italy, etc.

Prices, as of 8/4/10:
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1332.52

Prices, as of 9/21/10:
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1331.62
- LAX-Rome, Venice-LAX: $1418.51

Shake it up.

This morning, I found a flight for the itinerary that we want for $1068.

The only problem? A 12 hour layover in Charlotte, NC!

We would arrive in Rome on Friday instead of Thursday, effectively losing a day, but also skipping a night in a hotel.

What to do, what to do???

For me, it's not that bad a deal - I've been to Rome before and don't mind arriving at 9am, spending a day, and then moving on to Siena on Saturday. But we're traveling with people who have never been to Rome, and I feel like it's kind of cheating them out of seeing Rome.

Also? The super cheapo flight I found from Venice to Dublin that cost $40? Is now up to $130! Boo! And WTF!

Some re-thinking may be in order.

Ticket price puzzle: Part 3

It's been another 7 weeks since I documented ticket prices, so I thought I'd give it another go even though I found the article about buying tickets in January. Once again, I used the dates of June 15 - July 1, and, well, ticket prices are holding stead at "way too high." But! The good news is that they came down just a smidge!

Prices, as of 8/4/10:
- LAX-Rome, Vienna-LAX: $1466.88
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1332.52
- LAX-Rome, Stockholm-LAX: $1432.00

Prices, as of 9/21/10:
- LAX-Rome, Vienna-LAX: $1406.64
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1331.62
- LAX-Rome, Stockholm-LAX: $1331.62
- LAX-Rome, Venice-LAX: $1418.51

Europe airfare: The search continues.

I recently found a pretty great article on summer airfare to Europe on farecompare.com, and they've quelled a little of my anxiety about how much our flights will cost for next year.

The article, Summer Airfare to Europe, helps answer the question I've been contemplating since we found out we were going to Italy: When to buy our tickets. The short answer? Sometime between January, at the soonest, through March of next year. But what I found most interesting about this article was the table it has - it's a graph that shows the prices of airfare for the first half of 2009 vs. the first half of 2010.

Budget (woes)

As I may have mentioned, I'm a planner. I love to plan. And one of the aspects of planning is budgeting. While watching my "money" slip away as I build a budget is never fun, I still like to play with numbers and estimate what things will cost.

So, I couldn't help but build some budgets for this amazing trip we have in the works.

Of course, I sort of pad my budgets, and I base them on budget hotels, meals, etc. Hotel rooms? $150/night, though I'll be looking for $100/night. Food? $50/day, though we'll probably end up snacking for one meal a day, or buying stuff at the market instead of a restaurant. I think I'm pretty close on transportation, but I'd much rather come in under budget, than have something come up and be ridiculously more than we'd planned.

Here's the disclaimer of how I budgeted food. Breakfast = $10/person. Lunch = $15/person. Dinner = $25/person. I looked at what days we'd need what (arriving in afternoon, no dinner the night of the wedding, etc.) and came up with the food totals.

Ticket price puzzle: Part 2

On August 4, I checked ticket prices for the dates of June 15 - July 1 as a test to see what prices might be like for the dates we'll be in Europe next year. It's been six weeks, so let's see what's happened to ticket prices.

Old prices, as of 8/4/10:
- LAX-Rome, Vienna-LAX: $1466.88
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1332.52
- LAX-Rome, Stockholm-LAX: $1432.00

New prices, as of 9/21/10:
- LAX-Rome, Vienna-LAX: $1406.64
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1331.62
- LAX-Rome, Stockholm-LAX: $1331.62
- LAX-Rome, Venice-LAX: $1418.51

I added the LAX-Rome-Venice-LAX option in there because a couple people who will be traveling with us are most likely going to go home from Venice instead of doing the second leg of the trip. I'm pretty shocked at how much that ticket is coming in at right now! Crazy!

I'm also a little surprised at the rest of the results. Vienna came down $60, but Dublin only came down $0.90!?!? What's that about? And, Stockholm came down the most with a drop of almost $101, but Stockholm is pretty much out of the picture at this point. In fact, we've basically decided on Dublin.

I tested the dates for May, which is farther away from our actual dates, and the prices for the Dublin route came in at roughly $1100. Maybe this means the prices will come down next month?

This is not cool, airlines! I need ticket prices to come down some more over the next month (we'd like to book our tickets Oct/early Nov), because if they stay this high, it's really going to blow my proposed budget out of the water!

Airline tickets: Where to buy?

I have a question for you seasoned travelers out there.

Where do you buy your plane tickets?

Do you use one of the discount sites? Book directly through the airline? Whatever is cheapest?

I'm still looking at prices for next year's trip, and so far, all they've done is go up. They'd better drop at some point, or we could be blowing through our budget faster than we thought!

And then I ran into a dilemma.

See, Orbitz offers "price assurance." You buy a ticket, then if someone books your exact itinerary later for less money, you get a refund. Sounds great, right? But the catch is that little, five letter word - exact. What are the chances of someone flying from LA to Rome, then home from Dublin? Unless they're traveling with me, not very likely!

So, what to do? Do you try to find a cheaper flight, and spend the money, risking it dropping several hundred dollars later? Or do you to pay a little more up front, on the off chance that someone else books that same itinerary and you get a refund?

Right now I'm looking for the cheapest possible ticket, but I'm curious if anyone has used the Orbitz price assurance with success.

Ticket price puzzle.

Since we (as a group) decided we want to get our airline tickets for next year's trip within the next few months, I've been researching prices. I've never quite cracked the "when to buy" puzzle for international travel. So I've been testing out different dates with different locations to see what our best option will be.

We're currently considering three places to go after Italy.
- Vienna. I'd like to go back, but BF isn't totally sold.
- Dublin. BF really, really wants to go back to the West coast of Ireland.
- Stockholm. A friend has an old roomie who could show us around.

I'm currently testing out the dates 6/15 - 7/1, since it's not 11 months of the date we want to come back yet. I want to test as close as possible, because of course, we'll be going at the height of tourist season.

Here are the current ticket prices, as of 8/4/10:
- LAX-Rome, Vienna-LAX: $1466.88
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1332.52
- LAX-Rome, Stockholm-LAX: $1432.00

I was kind of surprised that the tickets from Dublin were the cheapest! $1300 is still more than we'd like to spend - we were hoping for more like $1200 at the maximum, so we'll wait it out a little and keep checking.

Do you have any ticket buying tips for us?

Flying Aer Lingus to Ireland

The first thing I noticed about flying to Ireland last year was that flying to Europe as a 27 year old is much different than flying to Europe as a 20 year old. I was not expecting to be jet lagged - and it took a bigger toll on me than it used to. But it didn't matter too much, because hello, we were going to Europe!

Buying tickets to Ireland, plus our itinerary!

In June of last year, I started to get the travel bug. Bad. It made me obsessively check Travelzoo, and Kayak, and all of my other favorite travel sites. We had considered a trip to Ireland for a while, and when I started seeing air fare rates drop on Aer Lingus, we decided it was high time to do it.

After monitoring AerLingus.com for a few weeks, we found a fantastic deal: Los Angeles to Dublin, round trip, for $482 per person, after taxes. We booked directly through the Aer Lingus website - Los Angeles to Chicago to Dublin, and back.

Then, it was just about figuring out our itinerary. We wanted to get a good taste of Dublin, but we didn't want to spend all of our time there. We wanted to see the country, and decided that renting a car was our best option. My boyfriend wanted to see the North West of the country, I wanted to see as much coast as possible.

Dublin