Booked a Flight to San Francisco for a Week!!

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I just finished booking our seven day, round-trip flights from NY to San Francisco for the whole family. We will be renting a car and two days after our arrival, we'll be driving 350-ish miles to The Redwoods National Park near Crescent City, CA. We are a BIG nature family, so this is very exciting for all of us. Since we also try hard not to throw money away we also saved tons by booking our flights through a sale I ran across on Travelzoo. WWW.Travelzoo.com sends me a weekly e-mail listing the top 20 travel deals around the country.  One of those was the $99 one-way to and from San Francisco from NY. Last, I found an off-airport car to rent for the week for $202 total.....SWEET!  

Next,  I have to look hotel deals. We thought we'd do the SF thing for two days, then to the Redwoods for three days and then back to SF for one day. I have found Priceline's Name Your Own Price for Hotels very good at saving me lots of money. Like the last hotel we stayed at I started small talk with a woman in the elevator, I comment, "This is a very nice hotel". She smiles and responds, "Yeah for $70 is not bad at all."  Little did she know I only paid $40/night for a room with 2 double beds, refrigerator and wireless connection. The secret is (1) ordering your room way in advance and (2) the way Priceline.com "Name Your Own Price" is set up you can bid on your room and get accepted or rejected. Once you get rejected you have to increase the search area you want and ask again.  Increasing your search area placed you at a disadvantage for you might be placed in a hotel far away from where you want to be. UNLESS, you wait 24 hours and do it again in which case you can bid a wittle-bit higher and stay within your area.  So, if I get rejected, I wait 24 hours and try the next day, so I don't have to compromise on my location needs. I always get a very nice price and within the area I want to stay at. 

Last night I could not sleep thinking of the 6-hour flight to SF. I was having nightmares of both my kids being escorted out of the plane for being too loud.  You hear all those horror stories, plus we are not a kid-friendly culture. Sure we can listen to someone blab away on a very detailed cell phone call yet, a kid cries and people have no tolerance.  I am going to have to read all about ways to entertain small MOBILE kids on a plane. Nora will do better I feel....She just gets restless and wants to walk around and flirt. Luke is the one I am worried about. He has a hard time controlling his emotions once upset....Yet, he does listen to strangers who are firm with him.....Now, if I can just bribe a flight attendant to give him a "talking-to" we'll be fine....(Just kidding). 

One thing is certain, when all this is said and done, I'll need a vacation from my vacation.