Planning Your Cheaper Summer Vacation

I know, some of us have finally just gotten out of winter, and some of you are still getting snow. Summer is the most expensive time to travel, with 75% of travelers going somewhere away from home June, July and August. This isn't always conducive to being a budget-traveler, especially if it's the only time you have to travel with the kids. 

Well, you're in luck! With my Summer ebook, you can learn all the tricks to getting cheaper deals on flights, food, fun and lodgings. How can you get the best rates on airfare? When should you travel to save more? How do you get the most from your dollars on accommodations? Can you get theme park tickets for less? The answer to all of these and more are in my Secrets to Summer Savings ebook, so you can do more for less on your summer vacation and still have money in your pocket when you get home for bills, food, and a winter road trip. 

If you want to travel more without spending a fortune, this is the place to start. Not only will you have a great summer trip that you won't be paying off for years, but you may still be able to sneak in another getaway another time of year. In fact, using my own tips, I take a week-long trip in the middle of summer then also take two weeks in the fall. If you need some help figuring out where to come up with the money in the first place, find some of my top tips here. You can get my ebook on Kindle, which you can read on the Kindle app on your phone, tablet, laptop or your Kindle. It's free to download, making it super easy. Spend a little to save a lot.

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And if you want everyone to know you're ready for vacation, go check out my shop for fun travel shirts, masks, and other additions to your travel bag. 

We'll be skipping Vegas this year and taking a late spring road trip to Los Angeles to hit up some theme parks and get some sightseeing in. Where will you be going this summer?

Disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links and I may be monetarily compensated if you make a purchase through these posts. This helps me to keep this blog running and bring you more posts you enjoy, so thanks in advance.

Hot Take: Palm Springs Is Better Than Los Angeles

Please don't get mad at me. I love Los Angeles, but what I don't love is spending 90% of my time in the car because everything is so spread out. While I adore Disney and all the quirky things that make Los Angeles unique, you can find the same vibe, minus The Mouse, in Palm Springs.   

So, if you were thinking about heading to Los Angeles for a quick getaway, unless you're going for something specific, like a show at the Hollywood Bowl or an Angels game, think about going to Palm Springs instead. Here are my arguments why it's better than the City of Angels.

The airport doesn't suck

I have strong feelings about LAX. It's in my bottom 3 airports. It's horrible to navigate and takes forever to park if you're driving. On the other hand PSP is small, has exactly the things you want/need in an airport, it takes advantage of the great weather, and it legit took us 10 minutes to drive from uptown to the airport, drop our car, and get to security.

It also has palm trees

You know those palm-lined streets everyone loves about Los Angeles? The ones you get to see a lot, because you're still stuck in traffic? What if you didn't get stuck in traffic and could really appreciate the view and the drive? That's Palm Springs. 

"I'm Batman!" - Adam West

It has its own Walk of Fame

You know how everyone talks about the Hollywood Walk of Fame like it's something super cool and not actually located, in parts, in sketchy stretches of Hollywood Boulevard, which nobody really walks, where you actually see a ton of homeless people peeing in the street? Listen, I don't blame the houseless for having to live their lives as best they can, but I've also never really felt too safe in Hollywood outside of the real touristy areas. Palm Springs feels pretty safe, even at night, no matter where you are, and sure, their Walk of Fame only has stars of people who were prominent in Palm Springs, but it's cleaner and more interesting and goes all around downtown. 

It's very walkable

If you walk in LA, people think there's something wrong with you. Also, you can basically only pick one neighborhood to walk in, because anything else would take you all day. Most of the things you want to see/do in Palm Springs is in Uptown and Downtown, both of which are easy to walk around in. You can have brunch, go shopping, and hit the museum, all within a mile of each other. We pretty much walked to dinner every night.

It doesn't take 3 hours to get...anywhere

I like driving. I really do, but being in the car for hours at a time sucks. Having to leave for something 3 hours ahead of time and still getting there late, sucks. Getting stuck in traffic when going, literally, anywhere at any time of day, sucks. The only thing that took us very long to get to was driving out to the Salton Sea, and that was only because it's 40 mins from town. It took us 30 mins or so to drive to the zoo, which isn't in Palm Springs. Everything else took 5-10 mins, unless we walked there, but then it only took 15, because we didn't have to find a place to park. It was amazing.

There are great shops

Whether you're looking for a cool boutique shop, or an upscale luxury brand, or a vintage clothing/furniture store, you can find it here. Within a mile of us was an outdoor mall with all the shops you know and love, a bunch of locally-owned shops with anything you could possibly want, a used bookstore, a pet boutique, and at least a handful of antique and vintage shops.

There is street art

Around every corner, you'll find cool art, either on the sidewalk, on the side of buildings, in parks, or outside the museum. (There's also great art inside the museum, we just didn't get to it). Make sure to look up and down and around yourself while wandering around. You won't be disappointed. You can also find a map of all the art if you want to just take a self-guided tour around the city of all the free art.

This is the Elvis Presley honeymoon home

The architecture is great

I. Love. Mid-Century. Modern. Love it. We took a couple hours and just drove around looking at the amazing homes in the hills. The city is a veritable treasure trove of MCM as well as vintage signs and art. LA has historical buildings as well, but again, you'd have to drive all over to see a significant amount. We drove around for half an hour and saw 50 homes all on 5 streets behind our lodging.

The home of Kirk Douglass

You can see the stars' homes

You don't have to pay  $30 for a Map To The Stars in Palm Springs. In fact, you can jump on the internet and download a map or stop at the Historical Society for a free one and then drive around looking at homes that were used in movies and TV shows, were owned, or are still owned by famous people, and generally just enjoy your time doing it. You don't have to board a bus with a bunch of strangers, with some guy yelling into a mic, and you can fit it into your schedule at any point of your trip.

You can eat healthy here, too

Los Angelenos are obsessive about their "health" food, probably because so many people are in show business, but it doesn't take away from the fact that eating healthy is important. You can have those same experiences in Palm Springs, just on a smaller scale, because the city is much more compact. And if you don't, you can do it up big, too, and also have brunch pretty much every day of the week (which I love).

Getting to the mountains isn't difficult

In fact, it's pretty easy. You don't have to drive to that one hill in LA to hike on a road. There's actual hiking here, regardless of your fitness level. The mountains are, like, a 5-10 minute drive from Uptown. You can't even drive to a grocery store in 10 minutes in LA.

The LGBTQ+ scene is everywhere

Everything was just so welcoming and chill here and I loved it. The city has a progressive feel and they celebrate their rainbow residents and visitors all year long and even have a street where all the gay clubs, bars, and shops are located.  

Stop yelling about how terrible I am, because I have nothing but love for LA. In fact, I'll be heading there in June for a few days to hit some theme parks and do a little sightseeing. I'll never get enough of the city, mostly because I can never see everything I want to see in one trip, but other places have similar things and can be better for shorter trips or ones where you don't want to rent a car.

What are your thoughts? Or do you have another x city is better than y city you'd like to propose?

My Shortcut Trip-Planning Technique

I've heard from a lot of you that travel planning is your least favorite part of travel. What do you do? Where do you go? Where do you eat? How do you get there? Well, I have been using a shortcut for all of those for years. Wanna know the secret? It's Google Maps! I use it for road trips, I use it to plan my vacation days and I use it to navigate everywhere.

Chances are, you're already using Google Maps - I know some people use it even if they have Apple Maps on their phone - which means you just need to learn to use it more and more effectively. It's easy and you can add things to a future or potential trip at any time. (You can click any of these pics for high resolution and to see it more in depth.)

I Want To Do That!

Here's what my Paris map looked like for my last trip. I tend to find things over time I want to see or do and "bookmark" it on the map. You can add flags to things in different trips to make them easier to find, too. How do you do this? It's easy!

Click on the thing you want to look at and if you decide to add it to your list, hit the "save" bookmark and it will give you the option to add it to your favorites, want to go list, current travel plans, a list you've already made, or scroll to the bottom to make a new list. I like to group mine into cities, so it's easier to toggle between.

Find My Stuff! 

Click the three bars in the left-hand corner next to the city or in the address bar inside Google Maps (or at the top of your screen if you're using your phone) and you'll get your list. Right at the top is Your Places. Click there and you can see your whole list of places you've made lists for. 

This brings up all the bookmarks or flags you've added to a list and you can see it on the map. This is where the actual planning phase of your trip starts. 

Fill In Your Days!

Now that you've added the must-do things to your list, it's time to fill in the rest of your time at your destination. I usually do this on my laptop, to make it easier, but I can't record my laptop screen. Once I have the skeleton plan of my trip, I use Google Maps to find other things around those places. This allows me to "walk" down streets and also see reviews and other visitor's pictures. When I see something cool, I bookmark that, too, and once I've finished that, I move on to making an itinerary, which you can also do in Google Maps.

Plan Out Your Days!

Okay, so here's how I plan a whole day around my must-dos. Go look at all the little flags on your map and look at where they're located in relation to one another. Here I had tickets to go to the Museum of Hunting and Nature, so I looked at everything I wanted to do around it and mentally added a circle around it that would be reasonable walking distance. You can make this bigger or smaller if you don't want to walk that much or if you're driving or taking public transportation. 

I noticed that Robert et Louise was nearby and a place I wanted to eat, so I made sure they were open and booked a reservation. That's another thing helpful when using Google Maps - you can see the days and hours of operation for anything you're looking at.  I also added some other stops, like Nicolas Flamel's historic home and the nearby bakery named after him. This is how I planned out my short day of arrival.

Now, keep doing this until you've hit all your must-dos and things you've got tickets for. Here, I've added my Airbnb location, so I could plan an easy day where we wouldn't have to go that far, but also so I know where all the nearest Metro stops are in order to get to the other sections on my map. One day we got breakfast at Kafkaf, walked up to Pere Lachaise, went back "home" to change because it stopped raining, and then took the train to the Pantheon, where we did other stuff in that area.

Plan a Walking Tour!

I knew we'd be walking a ton on this trip, and I just wanted a day where we did a bunch of sightseeing. I knew we'd be starting our day at the Eiffel Tower and ending our day at Museum de Caravalet, but not what we would do in between, so I did a quick directional map and then wandered along the route to see what there was to see/do along the way. This is how I found the Paris Sewer Museum. I know we love walking along the Seine, but we also wanted to see the Arc de Triomphe and wander the Champs Elysees for a bit. We got lunch, did our museum tour and then wandered up the river some more. 

Nicolas Flamel's house

I always have "maybe things to my list, because maybe you'll find yourself near things or maybe you'll have a bit of extra time you want to fill. Google Maps will alert you when you're near one of your picks, but it can also help you navigate the streets (whether by foot or car) and public transportation. Just remember to bring along a extra phone battery so you don't run out of juice while you're wandering around. We tend to recharge when we're sitting down to a meal. 

I started using Google Maps for road trip planning, because I like to stop on my way to see interesting things and it worked so well for that, I just knew it would be great for smaller scale things like a city or even a neighborhood, and it is!

So, if you feel lazy, or you just really need to plan a trip quickly, you can do all your research inside Google (though I suggest starting elsewhere to create your "bare bones" list of must-do things, especially if this is your first visit somewhere) and make a game plan and easy itinerary. You can also jump on attraction websites to buy your tickets ahead of time this way, too, making your life even easier. Find hidden gems, awesome eateries (or coffee shops to start your day), and even street art. 

Have you used Google Maps to plan a trip before?

Disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links and I may be monetarily compensated if you make a purchase through these posts. This helps me to keep this blog running and bring you more posts you enjoy, so thanks in advance.