Time for another Update almost a year later...

Ok here is another update, after one busy year.

After a lot of saving up I was able to make yet another trip and visit my girlfriend at the west coast of USA. I stayed for 86 days and I spend around $2000 during the whole trip on food, stuff and flight tickets. We also made a short trip to see Walking with the dinosaurs and that is all included on the 2000 I spent. Of course staying as long wouldn't be possible if I was staying at hotel as hotels are mighty expensive, but by taking a little of your time and by doing some planning you can get quite a bit of your money saved.

First lets look at a few places to start looking for plane tickets:

www.kayak.com ---> An excellent search engine for finding cheap flights, especially if you take time to register as that gives you option to be flexible 3+/- dates you chosen ( I found my flights from there for $830 from Helsinki to west coast of US with 2 layovers through London heathrow and Los Angeles )

www.Travelocity.com ---> I have found cheap flights from here quite a few times as well and sometimes you may find a good vacation packages as well.

www.cheaptickets.com ---> We have found twice the best price from here for my girl friend to visit me, thought I must say that their customer support isn't the best out there as we have had trouble with them when we had to change the date on my girlfriends tickets, but if you look for bargain, the name of the website says it all.

These are only a few I have used over the years and found as pretty good sites. But I'm sure you can find ones in your own language as well by just going to any search engine and typing in "cheap flights" in your own language and see what comes up.

Then lets look at the hotels. Well first rule is to look at the hotels with most convenience for you and the transportation at the locations you want to go to from your hotel. After that you want to go look around a little online and see what kind of reviews your hotel has gotten, after all you don't want to live in a hotel that is cheap but filthy and people behind the desk are rude or if maids have stole money or other belongings in that location.

www.Hotels.com ---> I used this place once to get hotel it offers pretty good maps of the location in the city, describes well what the hotels have and offers a lot of reviews from people who stayed in the hotel you're looking at. Also they show special deals that change at the times.

www.hotelclub.com ---> Now here you most definitely want to register. Each night you stay at the hotel, gives you credit which can be used towards the next booking you make on the site rewarding you using the site. I think me and my girlfriend have saved about $60 on 15 nights we stayed at hotels we taken from that site. The site also allows you choose the number of stars on your locations, thought if you don't want to stay in 4 or 5 star hotel, unmark those as the search engine gets kind of screwy at the times.

That is all I have to offer right now. I will try to remember to log on here more often and try to offer you my advice as often as I can.