Travel

A few months ago I posted a couple of pictures from when I went to New York. One of the things that my friends dad looked at doing when we went there to visit was possibly getting baseball tickets from a New York ticket broker. He ended up not being able to and we went to dinner at the Plaza instead, but I was sor of looking forward to it either way. One of my more memorable road trips.

I’ve been writing a lot about vacations lately and posting pictures of some neat places as well as the exotic. I have some vacation time coming up in July and am very much looking forward to it. It probably won’t be this year, but with my son leaving for boot camp and my daughter starting school this fall, I will be able to come up with some extra money over the next twelve months and would like to fly to Hawaii for my vacation. Just the wife and I. The hard part will be in finding someplace for the girls to stay for a week.

One of the things I would like to do is to stay away from the big hotel chains and rent a kihei maui condo or villa. Hotels are nice, most of the time, but just don’t provide the niceties and privacy that I would prefer. Check out some of these pics from around the Kauai vacation rentals.

Some of the areas in Hawaii are just plain beautiful and exotic. I generally only get a week of vacation, but I also get one ten day vacation each year and would love to spend it on a Hawaiian vacation.

One of the really cool things is that the EPA has really been making an effort to help clean up Hawaii. With the amount of people from the mainland U.S. as well as the rest of the world that come to visit Hawaii each year, the help is much needed and appreciated.

Earlier I was rambling on about Key West again. THAT is more my speed than flying. I hate flying anywhere. While I really want to see Europe it will be around the time that they get that underwater train working 🙂

I do want to take another Florida vacation soon though and Key West is the place. I was reading a couple of blog entries recently where one of the companies that I do business with took their executive retreat in Key West and it looked like they had a blast.

Perhaps in the next year or two we can get some kind of blog meet going on down there.

I would almost like to fly (notice I said ALMOST) to Europe and hang out for a while. It would be nice if I could eventually get enough time off from work to go over and rent a couple of villas in Italy, go to Germany, Britain, and a couple of other places. Heck, even though it’s expensive it’s more about the time factor right now than it is the money.

One of my former bosses that holds the same level of employment that I do now is getting ready to go on vacation next month. Her big thing when she goes on vacation the last couple of years is cruises. I was kind of thinking about doing the same thing once things have settled down at work a bit.

I certainly wouldn’t be able to take one on the next vacation, but you never can tell about next year.

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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…

Some other places that I would really like to go since I am blogging about expensive places is the Far East. Japan, Malaysia, Bangkok for instance. Yeah, I know this may be getting old but I have had a pretty cool time posting pictures and reading about some of the countries that I will end up visiting sooner or later.

When I used to commute 75 miles each day to work I listened to a lot of Talk Radio. One of the shows I would listen to on the way home in the afternoon was the Clark Howard show. Each year he takes his staff on a really cool vacation and one year they took flights to Japan. I was really jealous. I darn sure don’t see my boss taking me to Japan any time soon.

This is a picture of Mt. Fuji, the highest point in Japan, with Sakura and the Bullet Train in the front.

Since I was already starting down the road I figured I would do some reading on the other places as well and price flights to Malaysia. Malaysia is a confederation of thirteen states located in Southeast Asia. It’s a pretty diverse place and actually takes up two geographic regions. Malaysia gained independence from the UK in 1957.

This is A Famosa, which was built by the Portuguese in the 1500’s.

This next one is the Ubudiah Mosque.

The last “window shopping” I did was to price flights to Bangkok, although in the past I generally took the train on more than one occasion if you know what I mean. I haven’t done that in quite some time though.

Bangkok is the Capitol of Thailand, right near the Gulf of Thailand. It’s also the 22nd most populous city in the world right now.

This is pretty cool. It is the Vimanmek Royal Mansion, which is the world’s largest building made of teak wood.

Anyway, that is probably all of the virtual sightseeing I will do tonight, although you never know.

Yeah, this has been an extremely long hard week. All I am thinking about is vacation time. I have had to bump mine from the scheduled week in the middle of June to just after Independence Day. I don’t remember the last time that I actually took a vacation in July. It’s been quite a while though.

Any time that I start looking for a vacation spot I get online and the first thing I do is look at the places I know I can’t afford. Stupid, huh? I have actually found some pretty good deals this way, some of them I CAN actually afford. Before the end of the year the wife and I will have up to date passports, as with the new job I will be able to travel a bit. The trick is to get the extra time off, but with the addition of one ten day vacation each year that pretty much solves the time-off issue as well.

A friend of ours from that we met back in September of last year in Helen lives in Canada. There are always pretty cheap flights to Canada to be found, particularly in the fall and winter. I tend to try and visit places in the non-touristy season because rates are always the best then. There are also some really good rates on flights to Caribbean areas right now as well, even though it’s still pretty busy down there in the summer.

I would really like to get down to the Caribbean at some point, or if not, then at least Key West or the surrounding areas. What would be really cool is to have a blogmeet down there. Get some of the Jawja bloggers down there as well as some of the others that I know from overseas. It would be a blast. They should be able to get decent flights to USA airports at a good rate right now too.