Making the most of two- and three-day weekends (and the days off I’ve accumulated in my eight-plus years at Dell), I’ve jaunted off this year to San Francisco, Chicago, Puerto Vallarta, and I just got back from London and Barcelona. That’s by far the most personal travel I’ve ever done in seven short months! And while I use vacation as an opportunity to detach from the tethers of technology (say *that* three times fast), I’m completely dependent on technology when coordinating my trips.
Kayak might be the best travel Web site EVER. Entering your search criteria one time, it searches tons of sites for the best possible prices. I especially love it for airfare - it saved me a ton versus what I could have spent on my round-trip flight to London.
I didn’t know much about Barcelona before I went there, so I counted on user ratings and reviews when figuring out where to stay. The people who posted reviews on Expedia certainly steered me right! By giving it a 5 out of 5 stars, they pointed me to the Gallery Hotel in Eixample, a quaint, sort of upscale area that’s steps away from several Gaudi buildings. My friend Amy and I loved the hotel - it was an escape from the more touristy parts of town.
(One note: ratings and reviews are fickle! The 5 out of 5 I saw a few weeks ago is now a 4.4 because many people didn’t appreciate the construction on the hotel’s street. I guess my point is this - check back often!).
And doing Google blog searches gave me some great insights for our visit to Barcelona. In particular, we visited La Boqueria because of the raves it got in several blogs. (I got some great gelato and really fresh strawberries there).
Now…not all technology is bad on a vacation. When paying by credit card in both the UK and Spain, they bring a gadget to your table, swipe the card, have you enter your PIN when necessary, and that’s it. Why don’t we have this in the U.S?! No worries about handing your credit card to a perfect stranger and watching it disappear for several minutes. Genius.
And I do snap like the paparazzi when traveling; I wear out my digital camera’s battery in a matter of hours! That’s necessary vacation technology. Once home, I load the best of those photos to an online gallery so my friends can see them. And most recently, I shared the link to my vacation photos on Facebook. It’s been really fun having my friends comment on my trip and pictures like this one.
All vacations come to an end, and it’s nice to be home. I did miss my DVR. But I can’t wait for my next trip … Germany in October!
August 20th, 2008 at 6:43 am
You should enjoy Germany, Berlin is nice. I would make some recommendations but I only did a quick tour of Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie was interesting but if you want a picture with the soldier expect to pay for it.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:33 am
The problem with the wireless credit card terminals is that quite a lot of them use unencrypted wireless networks which means that people can lift your credit card and PIN numbers directly out of the air. Ouch!