Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Great Travel Web Sites

I love to travel. In fact, I don't get to travel enough. Along the way, I've found an interesting collection of travel-related web sites and I thought I would pass along some of them to you for your future reference. Enjoy!

Ryan Air - If you ever head to Europe, you need to know about Ryan Air. It has to be the least expensive airline in the world. For instance, when I last flew from London to Rome, I paid $20 (with taxes) for a one-way ticket. In pursuing their web site today, I see you can fly from London to Venice for about $1.40. There are plenty of tickets available, so their prices are not some bait-and-switch scheme. And the aircraft and flights are very good.

SeatGuru.com - Believe it or not, you can do more than choose window or aisle seats when you book a flight. If you want to insure you're not stuck in a bad seat (one that doesn't recline, has no window, or worse, is located in the smell zone near a galley or lavatory), check out SeatGuru.com, which rates each seat on all the airplane models for the major carriers.

Airlinemeals.net - If you care about your airplane meal, check out this site. It will tell you if your flight have awful, just plain bad, or satisfactory food. There are photos and user reviews of the so-called food served on nearly every airline. And next time you travel, take a digital camera so that you can document your meal and add to the database.

JetBlue - They offer some pretty cheap flights from Seattle to many major American cities. For instance, today I found a one-way flight from Seattle to Boston for $79. Looks like they are trying to be the Ryan Air of America.

HotelClub.com - After doing a lot of web searches for my last trip to Europe, I found this website to offer the best rates. For instance, I saw the same hotel in Rome listed on several web sites and this site had the best price by far. You can get great prices around the world with Hotel Club.

Hotwire - I have found in the past that the major websites for hotels all show the same hotels at the same rates. Not true with Hotwire. I have found some much better bargains here than anywhere else. Try it sometime and see what I mean.

Affordable Travel Club - This is a special club for people over 40. Susan and I just joined and Susan's brother has been a member for some time. Through this club, you can stay in member's homes around the world for $20 a night. That usually includes breakfast. The flip side of this coin is that as a member, other members can stay in your home. They currently show 1300 homes in 30 countries available. Check it out if this appeals to you.

National Geographic Traveler - A good site for information and photographs from around the world.

The Lonely Planet - More good information about travel around the world. Lots of good reading here about far away places.

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