Texas RV Travel blog

My mother, father and older brother and sister were born in New York City. I was the first native born Texan in my family. The first time we visited New York City, I was only five years old and remember being cold, ill, and wondering how Santa Claus was going to find us in a motel in New Jersey. I do remember seeing the Statue of Liberty and visiting family members.

As I grew older, I was happy to visit my family in New York. Growing up within a nuclear family means you miss family reunions, Christmas at Grandma’s and having a safe place to go when you need it. My extended family lived in the Bronx area of NYC. This is a very old part of the NYC and the apartments were built just after WWII. It was always exciting to stay there because you could not plug in more than one appliance at a time or you would blow circuit breakers. However, we could walk to Macy’s and to buy pizza, large hot soft pretzels and Italian ices. I could have lived on those four items.

My mother and I went to New York City three or four times before I left home. Each time, I was a little older and we did more sightseeing. We toured Manhattan and Brooklyn in a double decker bus. I liked the buses much more than the subways. We did use the subways to visit my aunts on my father’s side of the family. We ate lunch in the middle of Manhattan.

One tour gave us a ticket to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but my mom did not like museums, so I went on my own. On the way, I met some young people and found out about all the things to do in New York. I went on a tour of the countryside on a motorcycle with these new friends and saw some truly beautiful lakes and byways within an hour of NYC.

If you are planning to travel to New York or other major city, read the online travel guides at the Trusted Tours & Attractions website. While you are there, make sure you sign up for Trusted Tours & Attractions eNewsletter for a chance to win a $150 iTunes Gift Card!

Happy trails!

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The TravelHacker blog on AirlineCreditCards.comhas released a list of Top 100 Best Travel Journal blogs. Texas RV Travel blog is number 47 and is under the category of Region Specific blogs. I saw the backlink to my blog or I would have missed it. I would not have wanted to do that as I appreciate all my readers.

To you, Christina Laun of TravelHacker blog, I present the Nice Matters Award and my sincere thanks!

Take a look at the many wonderful travel blogs that TravelHacker found.

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One of my favorite places to visit is San Francisco, especially in the spring. It has been a long time since I have been there, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

We flew into SFO and rented a car. We checked into our hotel and then headed to Pier 39, which is an entertainment complex located on San Francisco Bay. What I loved most was the view from the pier; we could see the Golden Gate Bridge, Bay Bridge, Alcatraz Island and Fisherman’s Wharf.

We ate at one of the many restaurants on the bay and then walked around, window shopping. We walked over to K Dock and watched the sea lions. We discussed taking a cruise around San Francisco Bay, but decided to catch a ferry to Sausalito, across the bay from San Francisco. We visited several art galleries and unique shops in Sausalito, ate an early dinner at a delightful restaurant and then caught a return ferry back to Pier 39. As we crossed the bay, the fog was rolling in, blanketing the City by the Bay in a misty blanket.

Trusted Tours & Attractions is a purveyor of sightseeing tours and tickets in advance, like San Diego zoo tickets. Visit their website and discover all the things to do in San Francisco. Sign up for the Trusted Travels eNewsletter and you might win a hand held GPS! You may need it if the fog rolls in when you are in San Francisco!

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Frank Bates says he hopes his Airstream Ranch will become as popular as other roadside attractions, such as . . .

Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, Texas

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My favorite place in the world is Kauai, Hawaii. I have not been there in years. First, I had to finish college, raise my son and pay off my debts accrued as a single mom. Then I married Michael and all of a sudden, we had two houses, two teenagers with cars and NO money. Now, we have sold a house; the boys are living in apartments, attending college and paying for their insurance and cars.

Our thoughts turn to travel, both within Texas in our RV, and to other destinations. I love Texas, but it is just so darned BIG. If we drive from Austin to El Paso, we are halfway to Phoenix; to Amarillo, we are halfway to Denver. We live on a fixed income, so we need to find cheap tickets if we want to travel outside of Texas.

cFares

I decided to check cFares, a travel comparison site. cFares claims to have deals you will not find anywhere else because they search Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity, all the airlines and wholesale travel consolidators.

I joined cFares travel site as a gold member, which is free, of course. I wanted to know if I could find a lower fares in their system. As a gold member, I may search for discounted airfares from airlines and major online travel sites, including air/hotel/car deals. I will also see any special Platinum fares available.

 Using cFares to locate the lowest fare is easy. You just type in your local airport and the destination airport, the dates and times you wish to travel and how many stops you are willing to bear. You may also select specific airlines because of frequent flyer miles or personal preference before you search.

Results

The search just took a few minutes and the Gold fare and the Platinum fare were the same, $671 round trip per person. There were cheaper fares, but I was not willing to spend 12 hours traveling, with multiple stops. It is a good price, too.

Platinum Fares

To purchase, we would simply select the tickets we want, either directly from cFares or from their travel partners (airlines or travel sites). If we select a Platinum fare, we would be billed $50 for the Platinum upgrade at the time of purchase. There are two types of Platinum fares: direct and rebate fares. If it is a direct fare, we pay the amount shown in the search results. If it is a rebate fare, we purchase our tickets directly from the travel partner, then return to the cFares Platinum rebate page and apply for our rebate.

cAgent

The fun starts when you use cAgent, which is a name-your-price service. cAgent searches until it locates an airfare to match your price. Then, cAgent will hold the reservation for 24 hours! You know your airline, the number of stops and roundtrip price before you buy.

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