New York Traveler.net

The Road to Rome

I live about 35 miles from Rome. Rome, NEW YORK! Someday I’d like to see the REAL Rome- Rome, Italy. I’m a big history buff and Bible student, so a trip to Rome would be thrilling! Alack, I cannot go as yet. However, one of my favorite travel bloggers, A Singaporean in London, has visited as is writing about his visit. The posts are really great! He’s breaking up the trip throughout five posts and you won’t want to miss them. Part 1 here and Part 2 here. I’m looking forward to more.

What’s uncanny is that I just watched the DVD series by Dave Stotts called Drive Thru History, and in 3 of the DVDs (it’s a 12 DVD set), he goes to Rome. The DVDs are excellent (see here: Drive Thru History with Dave Stotts #1 - Rome if You Want To). Stotts is really hilarious and makes everything fun. I love learning about the ancient ruins, especially. In America, we don’t have any “real” ancient ruins. One of the grandest “ancient ruin” is the Utica Psychiatric Hospital of which I wrote, but that, like many of America’s old buildings, turned into a drug rehab and alcohol center before being converted to a mental health records archives. Anyway, if you love history and humor, you will love these DVDs. And if you can’t wait for the DVDs, check out Singaporean in London!

Everybody’s Talking Vacation

“Summer vacation season” officially begins after Memorial Day. Are you doing any traveling this season? Many of my fellow bloggers are going to Florida this season. It seems like the “hot” place to be! If you are doing any traveling, I’ve got some great Internet tools at a website to help you create and plan your vacation. WeNeedaVacation.com is a terrific social networking/vacation planner site for families and friends to create, plan, and share their ideas and vacations. You can share your vacation experiences with anyone you want! You can also find some great ideas and deals on things like Panama City vacation rentals, too.

Social networking is the new trend for online travel sites (even my site). With more people going online for ideas, rates, and discounts, more sites are popping up to allow people to share and discuss their ideas and experiences. Members can rate favorite places and share comments, too. This adds depth to an otherwise “unknown” in travel experience. I love reading reviews and looking at photos, and find them incredibly helpful when we plan our trips. And WeNeedaVacation.com has just added the ability for users to upload and share videos of their travel experiences– a real plus! And if you have your own vacation rental property that you want to market, WeNeedaVacation.com has numerous tools to get your places listed. Check them out!

This is a sponsored post.

Travel Blogs Edition

Due to extended time with Entrecards, I haven’t perused my usual list of travel blogs very much. However, I do sift over the RSS feeds, and once in a while I’ll stop by to see what’s new. There are some interesting developments with the T-List, joining Twitter, and thus forming more of a community. I haven’t joined Twitter; I am buried in so many other social networks that if I join another I’ll never see my kids. Such things are so time-consuming.

Less Than a Shoestring, a real frugal travel blog, has a good post about little goodies to be found, free for travelers. Every penny counts, doesn’t it?

Kango also has the latest news on the Twitter-pated T-List. And they have changed their name to UpTake. I am not too fond of the change and have been irascibly vocal about it. I liked Kango and I thought it was memorable with the likes of eBay, Google, and Yahoo. But change it they did. Name change or not, this is an up-and-coming travel portal and I’m really looking forward to when they begin to include the northeastern United States in their listings. I think the travel world is needing a family-friendly portal such as this.

How Do You Find Your Hotel?

I read an interesting post today over at Aaron Dalrymple’s blog. It was about how the “average” traveler books hotels. I have a fondness for demographics and other such studies, so I read on:

I’m not sure how earth shattering this is, but this post from HotelMarketing.com refers to a study showing that most people searching for a hotel are using a search engine to find hotels rather than going directly to a hotel’s corporate site. No big surprise that the internet is helping to commoditize hotel rooms just as it assisted in pushing airline tickets that same direction.

For most people, I believe, hotel rooms are booked primarily — in this order — for their location (city & state), price, proximity to desired landmarks, amenities, and then brand loyalty. No real scientific data there, just my gut instinct on how the average person goes about finding a hotel room for a family vacation, weekend getaway, business trip, etc.

Hmm. I consider myself an “average” person, below-average sometimes, and above-average on rare occasions. How do I search for hotels? I don’t go running out to stay at hotels when we travel (we’ve only done it six or seven times in 15 years). I don’t like hotels very much. There’s something distasteful about sleeping in a bed that countless strangers have slept in. But for what it’s worth, I left a comment.

I use the Internet to search for hotels, but I always search through a hotel-finder search engine. I am an average traveler and for me I break down the importance like this:

Location
Price
Brand name
Online reviews and website of hotel
Amenities
Proximity to landmark (we drive)

Online reviews, like those from TripAdvisor, are very important. I give them great weight and might even try to contact the reviewer if possible. I know some are rigged, but not all.

Finally, I ALWAYS call the hotel directly. This is to test their customer service and to reassure myself that the phone number, location, and price are accurate. Phone numbers leading to real humans are very important. If I get a recording or no human, I move on. I always make reservations directly through the phone contact, too. And I tell them I am a travel blogger, to keep them on thier toes.

So how about you? I’d like to hear more from the “average” traveler. How do you search for a hotel? And what’s important to you?

Entrecard Travel Blog Update

Things have been a little slow in the travel blog realm this week. I suppose we are all in a lull, waiting until spring really starts to arrive. New York tourist areas are still closed, and most don’t open until after Memorial Day (that has got to change– why so late?!). Nonetheless, I’ve found some interesting places for us armchair travelers.

Central Perk is a new blog I found. I love the name. It’s written by a guy from Georgia, lol! His posts- what few there are as of yet– are historically-minded, so I like them. This one on Yankee Stadium (a good one to read for you who are gearing up for baseball season) and Rockefeller Center are very thorough and good reading.

Popular travel blogger Trip the Lady had an enjoyable post on Providence Canyon, GA. She is also branching out with a new blog, Dinner and a Blog. The recipes- some inspired by her travels– look sooo good. Don’t visit this blog when you are hungry, it will drive you nuts, lol.

There are some good non-Entrecard blogs I’m watching. Roadside America is finally joining the blogging community. I’m looking forward to this expansion of their website. And Kango Blog is getting some attention. I love Kango Blog (see the search feature in my sidebar) and it is filling the need for a good travel blog search engine. It’s still being built (covers only the west coast of the US right now), but it’s off to a fast and fantastic start.

All-in-All Adirondack Guide

Hat tip Adirondack Base Camp for showing off a (new to me) website that showcases everything Adirondack. It’s called the Adirondack Trailhead. The websites are amazing! This is a simple portal for everything out there relating to the Adirondacks. I’m impressed with the Flickr slideshow (scroll down). Some of the photos are absolutely stunning, like this ice castle in Saranac, and this nice photo of an autumn scene. The Adirondacks are beautiful. Check out what’s new.

Greece Travelled

I came across a lovely blog about Greece, while surfing Entrecards the other day. It’s Greece Travelled. It looks like it’s off to a beautiful start! The posts are light but informative. I love the photos– more photos, please! It hasn’t been updated since March 5th, so here’s hoping the author keeps it up. It’s a lovely blog and I love anything Greece.

Creative New York

Take a quick second and go see this hilarious photo. It’s at New York Nitty-Gritty, one of my favorite new photography blogs. (I found it through Entrecards, if you want to know). Every day there is a new photo. Today’s made me laugh out loud. I think maybe I should do something like that, after I renovate the house and install the exterior siding, don’t you think? LOL! It sure would shake up the neighborhood, and wouldn’t be any worse than those fake plastic butterflies I sometimes see on people’s homes.