May 21, 2007

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I was doing what I always do when I have been working too much (and lately I have been working WAY too much) and I came across a site that with listings to find an Orlando Vacation Home. What’s cool is that these vacation homes are all within a fifteen miles radius of Walt Disney World. Of course there are hundreds of other things to do in Orlando, if not thousands, but for most the main attraction is Disney World.

…Last one for awhile anyway. All of this vacation talk is getting old. I get to take on in July, starting on the 5th as a matter of fact, but I still don’t know if we are going to go anywhere yet or not. I wouldn’t mind going to London if we had the opportunity though. The wife has a close friend who is from England originally (she’s the one that lives in Hilton Head now). I don’t really know anyone from England myself, but I did make out with a Londoner of the female persuasion once though, if that counts.

Anyway, just as with any other places, if you keep a close eye on prices you can get a pretty good deal on flights to London every once in awhile, and their are always cheap hotels in London to be found. I don’t necessarily mean a bad cheap hotel in London, but just one with a good deal. There are pretty nice three and four star hotels that have sales plenty of the time, without having to go broke, or stay in a roach motel.

Believe it or not, but London has been around for over 2000 years. Considering that I look at things here in the United States that are 3 or 4 hundred years old and consider them OLD, there are parts of London that are just ancient. All of that history just wows me. I think that even though it’s not particularly warm, I wouldn’t mind. The average high and low temperatures over there are only about 38 degrees apart, compared with a much bigger range here. Even though I like it warm, I don’t like it TOO warm, at least not for an extended amount of time. The average temp in London for July and August is about 72 degrees. Perfect.

Most of us have seen this picture before, but if not, it is Westminster Abbey which is one of London’s oldest and most important buildings.

And this is the Palace of Westminster, which houses Parliament now.

The twin buildings toward the right are Westminster Abbey again. This picture is a picture of the day over at Wiki, and the author is Diliff.

This one I got off of Flickr and Wiki, thanks to Dano…

Too bad our friend lives in Hilton Head, SC or we might be able to visit here there. As it is I am sure that we could stay in one of the many cheap hotels in London that I found at easyhotel.

Once I really got to thinking about vacation spots I decided that going someplace sunny and warm would be nice. The older I get the more I want to vacation where it’s not cold. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy spending time in the mountains and wouldn’t even mind going to Alaska or Canada to hang out for awhile, but thoughts of spending a lot of time? Nope, I don’t think so. I used to want to move to Alaska, but all that cold air stuff kind of puts a damper on it for me. Since some of my favorite memories as a child are of Florida, I thought about looking at flights to Florida and hotel prices in Key West. I am still dying to go at least once. The farthest south I have been was Key Biscayne back when I was about seventeen and for the last couple of years I have wanted to visit the Keys.

Check out this sunset in Key West taken by photographer Soeren Rothe…

This virtual vacation thing is pretty cool, and with the hours I have been working lately, the closest I will get to a real vacation any time soon.

…and this one is the Ernest Hemingway house as taken by Andreas Lamecker…

Another warm place I would like to eventually go is the land down under. Every once in awhile I can find a decently priced flight to Australia and am so tempted to just pack up and go. One of the things that I did quite a bit of when I was ages sixteen until about twenty was road trip constantly. Even though I don’t do much traveling anymore, the wanderlust has stayed with me.

Another cool place that I don’t hear a lot about is Tenerife. I haven’t even bothered to price flights to Tenerife as it is well outside my budget right now, but that would be a blast. Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands off of the coast of Africa. Oh yeah…

I would be much more likely to try and go to Hawaii myself though since it is still part of the U.S. Even though I want to go about a million different places I there are enough places within the U.S. or one of our protectorates to last me for quite some time…