The Best Travel Sites

With the economy sour, and a plethora of Web sites out there promising the best value for your travel dollar, which sites sort through the clutter and save you money? Here are some of my favorites:

Kayak.com - The now eponymous site compares some of the more popular Internet web properties and compares the prices for you in one central interface, saving you the time and effort of visiting the different sites themselves. Kayak is useful in a few ways depending on the type of travel-related booking you are looking for. For airlines, it allows you a lot of filtering options to see the best priced based on the time you want to travel, nearby airports, stops, etc. Most airline Web sites have a best-price guarantee so if you know you want to fly, say, American, just visit their Web site, but if you want to compare conveniences, Kayak is the way to go.

Kayak is probably most useful in saving money on hotels. With a much less standard rate system, culling the various sites is more useful than airlines for a price comparison. Its also helpful for a city like New York with tons of hotels to have maping features. You can also save big bucks on rental cars with Kayak.

Travelzoo - Travelzoo's interface sucks and I'm not a huge fan of its search functionality. But the Weekly Top Twently list is amazing. Mailed out Wednesdays, it contains 20 of the best travel deals around the country - you can't really target to your preferred destination but give it time and eventually you'll strike gold.

Hotwire - Hotwire is pretty much the same thing as priceline, except it seems slightly less... sketchy. Hotwire is different because it gives you the price up front, it just doesn't tell you the airline or name of the hotel. I do like the interface on the hotel side, where you can search by area and star level. Frequently, if you know the area well enough you can get a pretty good guess as to where you're staying before you committ.

Priceline - Anyone who has used priceline frequently enough has a horror story. You really have to think and consider all eventualities before booking, but if you can truly be flexible, you can save oodles of cash. I like priceline best for hotels, sometimes you can get a better rate with a similar arrangement than you can on Hotwire. BE WARNED though, even though the rooms are technically double occupancy, if you're in a place like NYC where the average hotel room is the size of a shoe box, you shouldn't plan on being able to get two beds or shacking up with 15 of your closest friends. When booking airline tickets, BE WARNED, the VAST majority of priceline tickets booked are on VERY early flights out of the airport. If you can't fly out at 6am, don't book on Priceline.

Another New Restaurant Coming Soon to Eastern Market

It's somewhat fitting that on the day the new Matchbox outpost opens in Eastern Market, we find out that Acqua al Due will soon by joining the 8th St SE neighborhood. The original AAD is in Florence, and there is another U.S. outpost in San Diego. So far the reaction from those who have actually been to the Florence location has been ecstatic, so we'll hope the restuarant maintains that quality and style when it moves to DC in the coming months.

Acqua al Due isn't the first European restaurant group to take notice of DC recently. My beloved Vapianos originally hails from across the pond as well. Perhaps our European friends are realizing what many Americans haven't - that DC is a serious restaurant city, but with cheaper rents and less competition than the Manhattan market to test their toes in the eastern US waters.

DC's Drinking Binge

Well I guess I should be more specific in the title, the Inaugural Drinking Binge.

So early reports are that the City Council has passed a plan to allow bars in the District to remain open until 5am for 5 days surrounding the inauguration come January. This upset me, and at first I wasn't sure why.

I mean, I was all in favor of the convention cities doing this over the summer. It increases the amount of money bars can make and will likely lessen the 2am crush (Because lets face it, few people make it to 5am, departures will be more dispersed). Plus its just nice not having to worry about a 145 last call.

I think I'm pissed because I live here year round and don't get the benefits of these policies designed to make the city that much better for visitors - many of whom will never return. I mean, who pays the extra police enforcement needed for this venture? (well, not me, since I live a block outside of the district, but you get my point).

What ticks me off the most is I won't be able to partake in this new found freedom. No way am I going to be downtown when there are literally millions of visitors milling about and clogging the metro. Oh sure, I haven't seen the business side of a 3am bar closing time more than twice in the last year, but that isn't the point. It's the principle of the thing... or something...

Matchbox on the Hill to Open This Week

After about a year of construction and permit delays, Matchbox will open its second DC outpost this Friday in DC's Eastern Market neighborhood (521 8th St SE). Initially the restaurant will only be open for dinner and weekend brunch, once things get rolling smoothly with those services, they'll start doing lunch as well. The brunch will be both Saturday and Sunday, and supposedly will have a jazz trio as well - sure to become a popular place for those not as please with Tunnicliffs.

The Matchbox downtown is incredibly popular, and for the most part this seems well deserved. With amazing miniburgers and solid pizzas, the menu is a crowd pleaser. Lord knows the Hill could use a few more restaurants that go above bar food, and there is even a rumor that once things get settled this second location may take reservations.

Life Concierge Goes to Mexico

So my family decided that this year, instead of spending Thanksgiving in Iowa (LC Point of Origination), we'd fly down to Mexico to spend the holiday eating lobster and chilling by the beach.

Good idea, right? Mmmmmmm not so fast. Like most things in life, you have to tailor the experience to the audience, and this is where this particular junket fell a bit short.

All-inclusive resorts are the way to go... if you're on your honeymoon/engaged/celebrating anniversary. The food is unlimited, the booze flow free, it's relaxed and chill, and most of the resorts are secluded little hideaways between Cancun and Cozumel. At least the one we were staying at was immaculate with a great staff.

But looking at this from a family vacation perspective - booze flow free = embarassing drunken incidents with the parents. Relaxed and chill = there is NOTHING to do but lay by the pool and drink (i'm sorry folks but just sitting in silence for four days CAN get old). Secluded = prison surrounded by a high fence with nothing but 20 miles of mexican jungle on three sides and the ocean on the other.

One day, Life Concierge escaped to the hotel district up in Cancun and was somewhat shocked to find the same thing. Granted, there were a LOT of hotels here that were very close together,but they all seemed to be their own walled off little universes. I didn't see any bars, clubs, very little shopping, and almost no restaurants outside of the hotels. I imagine if I had gone into downtown Cancun this would have changed, but it was certainly not the scene I imagined.

I guess the moral of the story is, if you're going away for a week with your significant other, one of these resorts would be a great way to go. But I think the fam would have had a much better time in Miami, Las Vegas, or New York.

Fair Warning

If you're flying into DCA after 12:30 and expect to take a taxi home, expect to wait. From the Life Concierge's personal experience very early this morning, there is nothing more unpleasant than finishing an international jaunt surrounded by screaming kids and yapping weiner dogs than having to wait an hour in the middle of the night for a cab.

Private car services aren't as bad as you'd think, and in most places Super Shuttle runs 24 hours and operates on very short notice.

New Visitors Center (finally) Opening

Six years and $621 million dollars has been spent on the boondoggle known as the Capitol Visitors Center, and for the first time visitors will FINALLY be able to see the inside of this facility on Tuesday afternoon.

Capitol Tours have beena awkward for quite some time, in the 1790's the designers didn't really plan the grounds with thousands of daily visitors in mind. So, Congress decided it was time to build a visitors center that protected constituents from the elements while they were organized into tours. That was 15 years ago at a price tag of $71 million. Delay after delay occured, (tearing up the Capitol grounds is apparently a sensitive topic) and then 9/11 occurred. All of a sudden this project took on a new sense of urgency along with a new sense of scale. A shadow government center, office space, and new security measures for the center were to be added. Planned completion? Before the inauguration in January, 2005.

I've lived in DC for five and a half years, and in that time I've never seen the front of the Capitol when it was NOT behind a construction fence (granted, its been a few weeks since I walked by, that may be down now).

But hey, enough looking back, time to look forward. Apparently the new center is shiny and bright. Even better, there is now a new scheduling system for tours that replaces the old absurd way of getting to the grounds at 7am to try to get a timed slot later in the day. Thanks for embracing technology folks. To reserve your spot, visit: http://www.visitthecapitol.com