Web Travel Fun

One of my guilty pleasures is surfing travel sites on the web. This habit actually comes in rather handy when I get around to planning trips because I have this little mental rolodex of where I’ll find all the info I need. Some favorites:

For general travel-pondering, I’m deeply addicted to the Fodors message boards. Admittedly, these boards do not skew towards the adventure/backpacker set, but they have great regular personalities and really detailed information in trip reports. No joke, posts have revealed serious gems in Italy.

Along the same lines, the Slow Travel website has great vacation rental reviews for most of Europe.

The king of all review sites, Trip Advisor, is completely addictive. You can read about just about every hotel in the universe here.

The Get Human site is just generally cool – it gives you the secret code for getting an actual human being at all kinds of places.

For road trips, especially in Europe, the Michelin website can’t be beat. This is unsurprising, given that their maps are among the most detailed of Europe. (For Italy, the Italy Touring Club maps are also rather good.) That said, I’m rather disappointed that they don’t have super detailed maps of Croatia.

For airfares, I always start with Kayak. Even though clicking through to airline’s own sites and searching can sometimes save you $10-20, and sites like Go Today sometimes have good consolidated deals, this is the best way to get the lay of the land. Plus I love the little sliding controls that let you adjust your criteria after you search.

The Inside Flyer site is the guide to mastering frequent flyer land. It lists “secret” deals and teaches you how to game the system. Seriously helpful if you’re planning a trip in advance and want to fly free.

The Fare Compare website is also all about gaming the airline system. In particular, you can sign up for alerts on particular routes and they email you when there’s a significant price change. Plus, for the serious travel nerd, the site gives tips for getting Q-up and Y-up fares (basically first class seats for coach fares).

Blurb, I think, is my coolest new discovery. It lets you create real, honest to goodness books from your photos or blog. And, you can stream photos or blog entries right from websites to your computer. Then you just play with the formatting. And the books are really nice when they come – great printing and photo definition and even spiffy book jackets. I made my sister one for Christmas and it was genius, if I do say so myself.