Inject A Bit Of Variety to Your Summer Travel

April 5, 2010 by · 7 Comments 

I’d like to make a suggestion for a summer vacation travel destination where you can find a great deal of variety in the type of local attractions offered. Summer vacation travel means different things to different people, that’s for sure. It may include hitting a bunch of theme parks like Knott’s Berry Farm, or relaxing in the mountains. For others it is visiting the local museums or hiking or deep sea sport fishing.

One of the most well-known vacation attractions in Southern California is the resort area around Disneyland; this includes the Downtown Disney retail entertainment center with its wonderful Orange County restaurants, and California Adventure, on which Disney is spending around one billion dollars over the next few years.

Anyone who has not visited Anaheim in awhile will be surprised at its evolution over time. The addition of Disney’s California Adventure alone has changed the whole atmosphere of the Resort, and with the billion-dollar upgrade now underway this will only continue into the future. If you do any people watching, you will notice a very international mix of visitors at the Resort. In fact, people watching at Disneyland can be a fascinating activity, with a rich mix of cultures all in one place.

Speaking of a cultural melting pot, Southern California in general is a concoction of people and cultures from around the world. There is a particularly strong presence from Pacific Rim countries, but Europe, Asia and Africa are likewise well represented (not so many folks from Antarctica).

You’ll find quite a number of ethnic communities scattered throughout Southern California, and worth a visit in your summer travel activities. In Los Angeles County the obvious targest would be Koreatown, west of downtown, Little Tokyo to the west and Chinatown just north of the central business district. Orange County is home to Little Saigon and Fourth Street in downtown Santa Ana.

http://OakBedroomSets.Net

I picked up some good vacation ideas recently!

March 11, 2009 by · 7 Comments 

Even though the economy is bad, we still need a little vacation now and then. I’ve been doing some research into saving money while still having a nice trip. I’ve been checking out some of the online travel websites. It seems that they all find very similar travel deals when searching for plane fares and hotels.

I can recommend a good website that will lead you to good deals on hotel reservations. Basically you want to use a travel website that has a reputation for providing a trouble-free vacation. Then I was thinking about where to go where it’s easy to find good prices on air travel or where I can drive my car. One obvious choice is Southern California. There are several airports and lots of activities for all seasons of the year.

A lot of vacation ideas are provided at the SoCal Vacation Guru site. It focuses mainly on Orange County and Los Angeles County, but will eventually expand to provide more information on San Diego County and the Inland Empire desert and mountain areas as well. But there’s great information about Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood, the beaches, shopping, dining and other activities. There are discussions about saving money and how to arrange for the best trip if you only have a limited amount of time.

If you are a roller coaster fan, the SoCal Vacation Guru compares the major southern california theme parks on their thrill rides (Six Flags Magic Mountain and Knott’s Berry Farm win in that category). In fact there are few places in the country where you can visit a half-dozen theme parks within a couple of hours drive from each other.

The SoCal theme parks include Disneyland (with Disney’s California Adventure), Knott’s, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Universal Studios Hollywood, SeaWorld and Legoland. Of course visiting all of those would not be particularly cheap, but you could fit a lot of vacation fun into a short period of time, so you might save on airfare and hotel reservations.

Winter and Spring are probably good times to schedule a vacation, as the crowds are often lighter then at many Southern California vacation destinations. Compared to other parts of the US, the winter and spring weather in California is very reasonable.

Also, it looks like the economy has a lot of hotels really wanting our business. We might get better deals now if fewer people are taking rooms and buying tickets to theme parks. Anyway, just some things to consider as we live with the recession.