Are you sick of reading about other people’s New Year’s resolutions yet? Well, don’t worry, I don’t believe in resolutions. But I do believe in planning out my travel for the year in January, because otherwise, it wouldn’t happen. After all, I’ve got to get the time off from work, coordinate my vacation schedule with those of my coworkers, save the money for my trips, research destinations, etc.

This year, I reviewed my travel bucket list and decided to go to the places at or near the top–the places I most want to visit. Unfortunately, that means I’ve got two very expensive destinations planned this year. Gulp. How do I plan to pay for these very expensive trips? That’s a subject best left for a future blog post. The question of today is: Where am I going?

Honolulu, Hawaii

I had to postpone this trip from 2011, so I decided to make it a priority for 2012. It will never be a cheap trip for me, since I have to fly from Vermont, but it’s much cheaper to go there any week except Christmas. (For example, airfare was almost exactly 50% of what it would have cost to fly there Christmas week.) So at the end of February, I’ll be winging my way to Waikiki. God help me, I’m not looking forward to the long flying days to and from (roughly 20 hours each way, including sitting around in airports), but I think it will be worth it. On my itinerary are things like Pearl Harbor, Diamond Head, Waikiki Beach, the North Shore, the Dole Plantation, the Polynesian Cultural Center, and more. I want to sample some local beers from the Kona Brewing Company. I want to try Hawaiian specialty foods like shave ice and the Dole Whip. I want to learn a few words and phrases in Hawaiian, see how leis are made and maybe take a ukelele lesson. Will I have time for all these things? Who knows. But since Hawaii is one of the most culturally unique states in the US, I can’t wait to learn more about its history and culture in person.

The Norwegian Epic in the Port of Barcelona

The Mediterranean

In early May, I’ll be headed to Europe for a Mediterranean cruise aboard my old friend, the Norwegian Epic. Squee! I have already booked my Studio Stateroom. This is the trip I considered taking last year, but one thing held me back: I just didn’t know how I could possibly stand only having one day in Rome (can you imagine trying to see Rome in one day?) and having to choose spending time in Naples, Pompeii, or the Amalfi Coast during my one port day in Naples. Seems unfair, doesn’t it?

Well, this year, the schedule has changed enough to work for me. In addition to the Sunday-Sunday cruises that sail out of Barcelona, Spain, the Epic is now offering the opportunity to sail Wednesday-Wednesday out of Civitavecchia, Italy (near Rome). This means I can fly in early and spend a couple of days exploring Rome before my cruise, and another day after. I’ll still only have the one day in the port of Naples, so I’ve decided I’m going to have to throw Naples under the bus (or the boat, as the case may be) and go on a combination Pompeii/Amalfi Coast shore excursion during that day. And now that I’m getting the days I want in Rome, I’m okay with that. Other ports of call are Livorno, Italy (from which I can get to Florence); Nice, France (from which I could also go to Monte Carlo if I prefer); Provence (Marseilles), France; and my favorite Spanish city, Barcelona.

Would I prefer to travel slowly across Italy? Sure. But I honestly don’t have the time for that right now. And there’s no law that says I can’t go back to any of these places if I find I like them so much I’d like to experience them on a deeper level later on.

Mountains around Las Vegas

Las Vegas

I’ll be making my annual sojourn to my favorite city during Labor Day week in the fall, same as always. I’ve already started collecting a list of “new things” to do while I’m there. But I really, really have got to make it a priority this year to get out and see Red Rock Canyon or Valley of Fire—or maybe even take a couple of days to visit the Grand Canyon, which I’ve only seen via helicopter, never on foot. I’ll also be hosting the 2^nd Annual Vegas Solo Meetup that week, if anyone is thinking they’d like to come. During the summer, I’ll post details about that meetup at The Vegas Solo.

Road Trips and Miscellaneous Travel Daydreaming

Those are the major trips I’m taking in 2012, and they are plenty expensive enough that from a practical standpoint, I should stop there. But. . .but. . .but I can’t. Because I’m also considering a Thanksgiving weekend trip (if I can identify a place that’s inexpensive at that time!), a possible weekend in New York City (if I can get cheap airfare), and 2-3 weekend road trips as well. I don’t know if I can squeeze it all in, but I’d sure like to.

So in 2012, you’ll have those trips dominating the pages of this blog–along with my backlog of material I still haven’t written about my trips to San Diego and Orlando. I’m also reviewing my old journals for stories of people I’ve met from my travels. I have some I’d love to share, as soon as I can figure out how to write them up so that they’re as meaningful for you as they were to me. As always, I’ll try to insert some posts that address various aspects of solo travel as much as possible. If you have topics you’d be interested in reading more about here at SoloFriendly, please shoot me an email at gray[at]solofriendly[dot]com.

How about you? Do you know where you’re going in 2012 yet? What are your travel plans for the new year? I love living vicariously through others’ travels, so please share your own travel excitement for the year!

2012 Travel Sneak Peek is a post from: SoloFriendly.com

For the past 3 months, my friends and family, coworkers, people I know on Facebook and Twitter and total strangers on the street have been asking me “Where are you traveling this year, Gray?” and “What’s your next trip?” I’ve been playing it coy, building suspense, saying “it’s a secret.” Truth is, until last week, I had no idea where I was going.

As I wrote earlier this year, after the revolution in Egypt, I was experiencing some regret about not focusing on my travel priorities. In the past decade, I’ve traveled to destinations that were lower on my priority list because they were often easier and cheaper to get to.  This year, I decided to refocus on the places I most want to visit before I die. At the same time, I had some limitations because of my job, where we are understaffed and quite busy, and I have to coordinate vacation time so we’re not left shorthanded at a critical time. Also I’m not made of money, so there are budget considerations. What have I decided on?

Puerta del Sol, Madrid

Spring in Spain

First up is a trip to Spain in late May/early June. I wanted to go back to Europe again this year, but after experiencing how bone-chillingly cold it can be in the late fall, wanted to do it during a warmer time of year. I also wanted to avoid peak tourist season during the summer. So it had to be spring.

My first choice for this trip was Italy (my #1 destination following Egypt). But within a week of asking for the time off, airfares had climbed to ridiculously high levels, and it would have cost me between $1500-1800 to fly to Italy from Burlington. As I sought itinerary advice from Italy experts Jessica Spiegel and Robin Locker Lacey, even Robin advised me to wait; the price was too high.

Unfortunately, the prices were high everywhere else on my Europe list, too.  I checked airfare every single day to multiple cities, promising myself that as soon as one of them dropped below $800, I’d jump on it–no matter where it was. Last Friday, it happened. Round trip flights between Burlington and Madrid, Spain fell below $800.

The cynic in me was immediately suspicious. What’s wrong with Madrid? I thought. Surely there had to be a reason flights there were so much lower. Indeed, I quickly learned that airline workers in Spain had voted to strike for a number of days between April and September of this year. They kindly posted their strike dates online, though, and none of them coincided with my trip. So I booked it. (Now it appears there may not be a strike after all.) As a happy coincidence, Spain was #2 on my Europe hit list after Italy, so I’m very pleased to be going there.  Madrid (and Toledo and possibly Barcelona), here I come!

Unfortunately, because of the Europe trip, I had to cancel my plans to attend TBEX (the travel bloggers’ conference) this year in Vancouver. I just couldn’t manage two trips back-to-back like that. I will miss seeing all my travel blogger friends (and meeting new ones). I’ll probably be reading #TBEX tweets on Twitter obsessively and crying in my beer every night during the conference with regret that I didn’t go. But I’m going to try like hell to meet up with travel bloggers everywhere I go this year to make up for it. Anyone want to come visit me in Vermont?

Mirage Pool

Summer and Early Fall

After this, I plan to enjoy my favorite season in Vermont, summer, though I may take some weekend getaways during that time.  In September, I’m headed back to Las Vegas. Now that I have a Las Vegas website, I can’t even consider skipping a year of going there. Vegas changes very quickly, and I need to stay on top of those changes. And to be honest, though I had fun in Vegas at Christmas, I prefer to go during pool season. To mix things up a bit, I’m hoping to split my week between Vegas and San Diego, another US city that’s high on my list.

Beach at Disney's Boardwalk

Late Fall

In November, I’m headed to Disney World’s Food & Wine Festival. I blame this trip on my friend AJ at the Disney Food Blog, whose posts about the Festival last year had me salivating every single day. I plan to stay at least four nights at either the Swan or Dolphin hotel on Disney’s Boardwalk because as it so happens, last fall I won four nights at a Westin hotel in North America or the Caribbean in the Travel and Be Well with Westin Sweepstakes, which promoted the idea that Americans need to take more of their vacation time every year (a philosophy I wholeheartedly embrace in theory, though it’s sometimes hard to put into practice).

Right now, the plan is to take one day to visit Universal’s new Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park and spend the rest of the time eating and drinking my way around Epcot, sampling treats from different cultures around the world. I know, it’s not as cool as eating your way around the real world, but until I’m prepared to quit my job, eating my way around the real world is going to have to wait. I figure this is the next best thing. That said, I’d skip it if something more intriguing (in either North America or the Caribbean) came along between now and then. I’m fickle that way.

Sunset at Waikiki

Holidays

Finally, if I get the week off between Christmas and New Year’s as holiday time as I have for the past few years, I will probably take the opportunity to go to Honolulu.  I know that’s a horribly expensive time to go, but it’s also a great time to get out of Vermont and go somewhere tropical and warm. Then again, I might just go to Egypt after all.

So there you have it, my 2011 travel plans in a nutshell. Of course, as I mentioned recently, the best way to make God laugh is to tell him your plans. We’ll see at the end of the year if everything–or anything–worked out the way I intended. Do you have suggestions of things I shouldn’t miss during any of these trips? I’m open to them. Please share in the comments below.

Photo credit: Puerta del Sol by Tomas Fano and Sunset at Waikiki by hitachiota.

2011: Where Am I Going? is a post from: SoloFriendly.com

Here’s what happened:  I was out having cocktails with Diana Edelman and Abby Tegnelia last night when I received the robocall from Jetblue about my flight cancellation. I immediately tried calling to rebook, but kept getting the message that basically said “We have an extremely high call volume, please try again later or go to our website.”  Abby tried helping me rebook on the website via her Blackberry, but there was no obvious link for rebooking the canceled flight.  I was able to book another night at Treasure Island at a casino rate (thank you, TI marketing!) so I re-checked in there and got on my computer in the room.  Still, no obiovus link to rebook my canceled flight. In desperation, I tried booking a new flight. The first available flight it showed was MONDAY, six days after my canceled flight.

I texted my friend Chiro, who was also in Vegas with his wife Melinda during the holidays. Their flight had been canceled the previous night, so they were still in Vegas, but had rebooked on a flight out today (on Continental).  They were driving up the Strip, and he offered to take me to the airport so I could talk to a live person to see if they could get me on a flight earlier than Monday.  Thank God he suggested this, because there was no line at the Jetblue counter at 11pm and  the agent there was able to get me on a flight Saturday.  Still not great, but better than Monday.

I’m very disappointed with the way Jetblue has handled the aftermath of this storm.  I think everyone would agree that Jetblue is not responsible for the weather. How it handles the aftermath of a storm–including rescheduling canceled flights and customer service–is another matter.  The first place where it fell down on the job is with the inability for people to reach a live human being by phone to reschedule a flight.  “We have an extremely high call volume, please call back later” is unacceptable. People should be allowed to join a queue on hold until they get through to a live human being.  By forcing people to keep calling back, there’s no order and it’s a complete crapshoot as to whether someone will get through or not–EVER.

Step two:  If your flight is canceled, there should be a link to click to easily rebook a flight at the website, but “easily” wasn’t an option either. In desperation, I booked an entirely new flight (for $600+ one way!).  At the Jetblue website, they have issued a notice telling people NOT to go to the airport to rebook a flight.  In reality, though, that was the only way I got any kind of customer service (and a flight earlier than Monday).

Meanwhile, I’m stuck in Las Vegas through New Year’s Eve, when hotel prices are outrageously high.  The cheapest thing I could find (that I’d be willing to stay at) was Imperial Palace for $332 for 3 nights (a screaming deal by Vegas Strip standards, when you consider it includes New Year’s Eve). Is Jetblue going to reimburse me for the next 3 days of food and hotel expenses I incur here?  I doubt it.  I’m just glad I had this week off from work, so I don’t have to explain to an employer why I’m missing an additional few days.  Imagine all the people who are missing work–or who are trying to book tickets for more than one person on a future flight.

You’d think an airline would have a better plan in place for how to deal with this sort of thing. My situation could have been worse, certainly. I could have been Jason Cochran, who was stuck at JFK for 32 hours, thanks to Virgin Atlantic.`

Stuck in Vegas is a post from: SoloFriendly.com

Are you single?  What do you do for the holidays?  This has been a dilemma for me my entire adult life. I’d say 80% of the time, I’m pretty content being single, but there’s something about the holidays that just makes me feel like the odd woman out in a game of musical chairs.  Generally, my family has a big “family Christmas” gathering around Thanksgiving, so we all get to see each other, but then spend Christmas in our own homes.  When my cat was alive, that was fine with me.  She was my furry “kid”, and I wanted to spend the holiday with my kid.  After she passed away in 2006, I’ve been a bit at loose ends. I spent two Christmases with my ex-boyfriend’s family. They were lovely people, but the emphasis that was placed on expensive gift-giving at a time when I was having financial problems was stressful for me.

The following year, I discovered the joy of traveling during the week between Christmas and New Year’s (when my office is closed anyway).  I went to New Orleans that year and loved it.  I got to explore a city I’ve always wanted to visit, which kept my mind off the fact that it was the Christmas season.  Somehow, I feel less alone when I travel than I do if I’m at home for the holidays.

Las Vegas

So this year, I’m doing something I’ve wanted to do for the past 10 years:  Spending Christmas in Las Vegas.  Las Vegas doesn’t shut down for Christmas, which makes it a great place for people to go who want to “opt out” of the traditional holiday.   I’m hoping to do some live tweeting and blogging from Las Vegas while I’m there.   If, between opening presents, visiting family, and stuffing yourselves silly with Christmas ham and cookies, you would like to follow along on my Vegas trip, you can follow my tweets at Twitter.com/VegasSolo and look for blog posts at my Vegas blog, The Vegas Solo.

What do you think about singles opting out of a traditional Christmas and traveling for the holidays?  Have you done it?  Would you?

How I’m Spending My Christmas is a post from: SoloFriendly.com

At a beer festival at Lake Las Vegas

I never tire of the reaction I receive when I tell people I live in Las Vegas:

“Really?”

“People live there?”

“What do you do there?”

In response to those questions, I answer as follows:

“I live at the top of the Stratosphere, of course.”

Seriously though, if you want to know where to find the two million people who live in Las Vegas, look no further than our local dog parks, movie theatres, schools, grocery stores and libraries. We live and work just like anyone else. We just do those things in an eclectic, bizarre and interesting city that people assume is solely a vacation destination.

Hiking at Lake Mead

If you’re wondering what we do for fun when we want to avoid the crowds, traffic and overpriced drinks on the Strip, that’s a different answer all together.

So where to find us? Look no further than the following places:

Locals casinos – There are a smattering of casinos around Las Vegas that are far off the Strip but still serve as all-inclusive resorts. The Station Casinos family includes nearly a dozen casino hotels, and three in particular—Green Valley Ranch, Red Rock and Aliante—are jokingly known as “locals casinos.” They have oversized casinos, but they’re also outfitted with pools, movie theatres and concert venues. I’ll let you in on a little secret: For Thanksgiving and Christmas, many of us hit up the buffets at the locals casinos. It’s cheaper, more convenient and offers more variety than anything we’d make at home.

First Friday – On the first Friday of every month, local artists converge in downtown Las Vegas to sell their goods, perform in on-the-spot acts and open their art-related stores during the evening hours for the rest of the community to enjoy. This is essentially a monthly block party that ties together local shops, boutiques, galleries and restaurants that fly below the mainstream radar. A free trolley runs between all of the participating areas of downtown so that we can park somewhere simple, then enjoy our local arts scene without worrying about traffic.

Kegs at The Yardhouse

Town Center – This open air plaza is just a couple miles south of the Strip and is very accessible to visitors, but most of the people you find here are locals. Sure, we hit up the shops, but what we like most are the open children’s play area, movie theatre and restaurants. The Yardhouse and its incredible selection of beers on tap is always busy, and the Blue Martini is a popular locals lounge.

Red Rock – We like to encourage visitors who have rented a car to spend a day exploring Red Rock Canyon, but by and large the majority of people there are locals. Las Vegas is ideal for outdoor activities, and hikers and climbers frequently spend time at Red Rock. On weekend mornings, cyclists and runners flock to Red Rock to work out as the sun comes up. That’s when you see the most wildlife.

Hiking at Red Rock Canyon

Local Businesses – We have just about anything that any big city has; in fact, the joke is that the only thing we don’t have is an IKEA. But in addition to the mainstream stores, there are several local businesses in Las Vegas, and we like to support our neighbors by patronizing them. There are a handful of fabulous pizza places to chow down at, and I recently discovered an awesome fro-yo shop that I hope sticks around. Locals also own music stores, comic stores, bars, used bookstores and a variety of other businesses. There are a couple weekly magazines in town that do a great job of highlighting these businesses, and many locals make an effort to go out of their way to check them out.

JoAnna Haugen is the Las Vegas travel guide writer for WhyGo Las Vegas, which provides information on airfare, hotels and attractions in Sin City. She also writes a personal travel blog called Kaleidoscopic Wandering.

Photos courtesy of JoAnna Haugen.

Las Vegas Vacations

Hide and Seek: Finding Las Vegas Locals is a post from: SoloFriendly.com