Newport Day 1

There is no easy way to entertain oneself on a 6 1/2 hour road trip. Only two hours into the trip and I already caught up on all of my blogs using my Blackberry and the battery is flashing red. After a while I tried to figure out what every field and tree was. Peaches, tomatoes, watermelons, strawberries, cherries? O who cares! Are we there yet? Finally we arrive at the hotel. Thank goodness because I don't know who has me more annoyed with the "are we there yet?", Chris or the kids.


The hotel is located about a mile from the John Wayne Airport, too bad we didn't fly in, and the first thing Chris and I notice are the Jamba Juice and Starbucks located across the street. Yes!We check in, and head to our room. My first impression is: ehh, not the Fairmont elegance I was expecting and I'm not too happy about the valet only parking but the rate was good.


We check out our room and are satisfied with it's size for the four of us. The beds are very comfy, too. We drop off our bags & head over to the shopping center across the street to let the kids release some energy. They need it as much as we do. After finding a mexican restaurant and sharing a plate of nachos we head back to the room to attempt to take a little nap. At 5:30p we hear a knock at our door and are surprised by a hotel employee delivering a fruit platter. Chris tries explaining that we hadn't ordered anything, but the nice gentleman insisted the fruit was for us. After some back and forth of this Chris finally understood it was a welcome gift, along with a welcome note hand signed. Nice touch.


Tonight we had dinner and drinks with Tavo & Maryann at a place called The Yard House. Tavo and Chris had these gianormous beers, while Maryann and I had a cocktail. Dinner was as expected for a chain restaurant, but I'd return so Chris could have the 100 plus beer selection.


Tomorrow Maryann is taking the kids to the happiest place on earth and I'm getting an early morning facial. I cannot wait. I have no idea what Chris and I will do for the rest of the day without kids, maybe we can catch up on some sleep. We'll just have to find out tomorrow.

Coupons are a girls new best friend

We leave for Newport Beach in the morning and in an effort to stick to my $1,000 budget and prove that vacations are still affordable I will be clipping coupons to many attractions. Thank goodness for Smartphone’s, laptops, and Wi-Fi.

So far I have found a buy one get one free coupon to a Hornblower Summer Sunset Cocktail Cruise on visitnewportbeach.com. Cost is $28 per person, buy one get one free, but because I never consider anything “free” I see it more as $14 per person. Not bad for a 2 hour sunset cruise. Cocktails are additional.

At visitlongbeach.com I found even more coupons to restaurants, and attractions. One thing I didn’t find on any of the websites was coupons to any spas. Rude!

My plan is still to have no plan. I want to explore both Newport and Long Beach at my own pace, and relax by assuming I’ll be back.

Newport Beach here I come

With everyone looking to tighten their wallet, including myself, the first place budgets get cut is the family vacation. Many people think they can't afford a vacation and end up not taking one. This to me has never been a good idea since we all need time away from our everyday lives to reconnect with our spouses, spend time with our children, & get inspired to be creative.

I am the type of person that needs a vacation every other week but realisticly can't afford it, so in an effort to save money, but still take vacations I have decided to stay closer to home & explore more of California. I am kicking off this idea by traveling down to Newport Beach and see how much it costs to have a California vacation.

We'll be saving money by driving. It currently takes approximately $60 to fill up my Yukon, so I figure we'll spend around $200 in gas. It is my birthday so I plan on splurging in a few areas & a nice hotel is one of them. Being a part-time travel agent I knew the Fairmont was having a summer special and found a $135 nightly rate (with taxes) plus a $50 food & beverage credit. (That will be used more for beverage than food.)

I don't have an exact budget in mind but would like to keep it to about $1,000. This includes boarding my dog, gas, hotel, kids theme park tickets to Disneyland and a few sites for the adults. I'm terrible about staying on budget so we'll see how this goes.

Marriott's Deal of the Day

June 1st Marriott launched a "deal of the day" promotion on twitter and a dedicated website. Marriott announced that for two weeks at 7am et it will post a new deal at a different property which will only be available to book for 24hours. So far the deals have been great, but being that I'm way over here on the west coast nothing has really caught my eye.....until today.

Today's deal of the day is at the JW Marriott Resort and Spa in Guanacaste, Costa Rica from $95 night in a garden view room. That's a 50% savings from the regular low season discount.

Of course I can't just mention a discount and not test drive it for myself, so I input some dates in July and what do you know, I got the $95/night option. Yay! The total for five nights was $536.75. Now if only I could find $200rt airfare like Continental had to Nicaragua.

I can't wait to see what deal they roll out tomorrow.

For those animal lovers that just can't think of leaving their pets behind while on vacation now don't have to. Beginnng June 17th Southwest will start allowing customers to bring along a small cat or dog in the cabin for $75 each way. The pet must be in a carrier small enough to fit underneath the airplane seat, and the carrier will count as your carry-on bag.

Just another way to add on those charges. I can't wait to see how that works out for them.

The return of fuel surcharges

Nobody wants to talk about it, but lets face it with summer just around the corner and the price of oil per barrell on the rise, fuel supplements are bound to make a return. While we may not be near the $145 a barrell or $4/gallon price that we were paying this time last year, I think most of us are thinking that it's only a matter of time. So, although most cruise lines dropped the fuel surcharges for cruises in 2009, the rise of crude oil may just force them to reinstate those charges.

Last week the price of crude oil was $62 a barrell. NCL and Royal Caribbean said they reserved the right to reinstate the fuel supplement should the price of oil increase to $65 a barrell. Carinval Corp. reserved the right to reinstate should oil rise to $70 a barrel.

I really hope it doesn't come to this again because if most of you are like me you've saved for this vacation, have a set budget in mind and will try as much as possible (keyword try) to stick to it. Now imagine opening up your email and seeing that you have an unexpected bill for fuel surcharges and you can't leave on your much anticipated vacation until you pay for it. I don't know about you guys but that would really, really piss me off.

But I'll hold off on getting "Bonquiqui" crazy until the fuel supplement is confirmed.

Virgin America

Well someone was bound to do it and honestly it's no surprise that Virgin America is the first. Virgin America announced today that it is the first airline to offer in-flight internet service on every flight. Passengers can now recline in one of Virgin America's comfy black or white leather chairs, enjoy the cool mood lighting, and surf the web at more than 30,000 feet.

This means we will now all be able to IM, tweet, and update our Facebook pages while bored out of our minds on a never ending flight from NYC to SFO. Thank you Virgin America!