1.25.2010

Luxury Link Me!

I love vacation packages. It just takes all the guess work (and some of the work) out of vacation planning. Simple, easy and wonderful. That's what I like. The husband and I have booked just about every single one of our recent and upcoming UK and European trips through Expedia.com, which has been a wealth of information when it comes to cultural tips, customer reviews, pictures, maps, etc. It hasn't steered us wrong yet and the package rates for hotel and flight combinations are unmatched. But we've also been keeping up with luxurylink.com.



I highly recommend this web site if you're looking for a nicer vacation package or simply ideas on where to travel. The world is your backyard! Though we haven't yet booked a package on the site, we visit it regularly to read reviews, look at pictures and sift through all the handy info listed about various cities, areas and properties. We hope to book a package during our Italy trip, maybe this one....



Or this one...


If you're thinking about visiting Scotland, this site comes in handy: undiscoveredscotland.co.uk. It lists about every doggone town you could think of visiting, where to stay and what to do/eat there, as well as an exhaustive countrywide category search for distilleries, castles, restaurants and more.


BALVENIE CASTLE


 BENROMACH DISTILLERY

Traveling Europe and the UK can be overwhelming with a dash of tricky. We've narrowed down some of the most effective places to shop for flights and trains, which include thetrainline.com, ryanair.com, easyjet.com and flybmi.com. Rail tickets can easily add up but so can the flights. When we first got on Ryan Air's web site (whose flight service rates pretty low on my totem pole), we were thrilled to find flights for £17 one-way. But after we added the return flight, check-in fees, baggage fees and taxes, it was well over £100 per person. Not so cheap anymore. So the bottom line for you folks that are originating from home base in the US is to spend $$ not ££. Which brings us full circle back to Expedia, or even Priceline or any other travel service you prefer that can get you overseas for American money. I've also checked out cruise packages on Expedia just out of curiosity. They seem to be a great way to see several destinations but can easily get pretty expensive. And I don't have the best tolerance for boat rides, so I think we'll hold off on those for awhile. But I know several people that have thoroughly enjoyed recent cruises and seem to favor all-inclusive packages, so it's just all in how you slice it.

Another good idea is to carry your GPS. We've packed ours for every trip we've taken, whether a two-hour drive or a flight to Paris (we used the GPS to find our hotel once we got off the rail--life saver!). Even if we're not using a car, it helps you get your bearings for nearby attractions and transportation and you can even use it to look up food and entertainment venues when needed. Mike was able to borrow the UK/European GPS card from one of the former exchangees that lived here in Scotland and we've been so grateful. I'll try to post more of our travel tips as we go. Since we have so many place to visit this spring, I'm sure we'll start racking them up pretty quick.

Do you have any go-to travel web sites?

3 comments:

  1. Mike and Amber, thank you so much for the LuxuryLink.com shout out. We would love to hear more about your travel experiences on your LL trips!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Serena! We love that site, do you run it? I could sit and look at the packages all day long. Right now, we're trying to find one for Italy in June 2010 that includes a spa treatment or two!

    ReplyDelete
  3. thank you for your compliments about luxury link. please check out our community and post comments about the site.

    http://community.luxurylink.com

    ReplyDelete

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