I’m stoked to join my fellow FlipKey travel experts for a Summer Twitter Chat today! I’ll be sharing more about all my favorite New England summer escapes & we’ll also be chatting about favorite summer travel destinations all around the world. Join us on Twitter today (6/30/15) from 3 to 3:30 p.m. EST and follow the hashtag #FKSummer to add your best tips to the mix & ask your pressing budget travel questions!
I’m so thrilled to announce that I’m dusting off my passport, gassing up the car for road trips, and sanding the rust off my travel writing lockbox as a newly minted travel expert for Flipkey and TripAdvisor, sharing my secret spots in Boston and Austin - and also mean many, many more travel stories, new adventures, and past sojourns revisited, here on Shoestring soon.
One of our biggest New Year’s Resolutions is to finally budget time and money for travel, often, and finally take that beachy, romantic vacation of a honeymoon we never got, and SOON. I found this Honeymoon Fund jar at Austin Goodwill for a few bucks and immediately scooped it up, and every time I spot it on the windowsill in the kitchen, I throw in whatever cash I have on hand in my wallet (usually between $5 and $20), and have been re-reading the top tips for saving for a dream vacation I shared with SmarterTravel earlier last spring — trying my best to take my own advice.
Like many generations of student travelers, the first time I ever booked a night’s stay on my own was at a hostel, in 1999 at a hostel near London’s Leicester Square called “The Generator,” which greeted international visitors with blacklights and blaring techno and bright IKEA furniture…22 hours a day.
In New England, the end of the nice weather (not the beginning of summer) is when we start thinking about getting away, cringing at the thought of those nasty winter months up ahead and starting to save, plan, daydream, and book our next big vacation.
One of my least favorite things about modern air travel is forking over $50 or more to check a bag, rendering my hunt for the cheapest flight completely useless.
Believe it or not, there is an upside to a bad economy. Since fewer people are making vacations a priority, hotels and resorts are offering fantastic deals to anyone willing to travel.
A few weeks ago, at my local Goodwill, I found this awesome, (I think) out-of-print book by Jeffrey Weiss, touting “over 250 for enjoying the outdoors — yours for the asking at little or no cost!” And for just $0.49. Score.
It’s no surprise that weddings are a bit of a money pit. But after you cut the cake, deal with the crying flower girl, and finally untie all the cans from your car, you know you are going to need that honeymoon more than ever.