Several weeks ago I wrote about how we planned our summer vacation online.  I wrote about how I Googled for information about where we were going.  This year it was St. Augustine, Florida.  Well the trip has been over for several weeks; we are back and had a great time.

On returning, I was going to write a column about using online mapping programs.  However, Jessie P. (yes the same one from last week) told me that she thought I would mention her favorite online travel planner, “Trip Advisor” (www.tripadvisor.com).  I hadn’t intended on it, but after her urging I looked around the site. I felt that I should tell you about it and skip the maps for now.

Trip Advisor has a lot of information for travelers.  The really interesting part is that it is given by other travelers…not by the tourist department or the hotels and attractions themselves.  So I would think that would lend more credibility to the information given.

It appears to have information for most anywhere around the world.  I checked out the St. Augustine information and found several hotels that were priced lower than the best deal I had found at another online site.  I would like to have known about Trip Advisor before our trip as I found a little better price for the hotel where we actually stayed.  As usual that makes me a day late and a dollar short.  Oh well, there is always next year.

Tourists like you and I write reviews about the hotels.  It did make me laugh a little when I read reviews about the hotel we stayed in.  A couple of people complained about the Comfort Inn regarding the service and conditions; we found both to be exceptional.  To me, that just makes it more “real” since you can’t make everyone happy all of the time.

There were other areas of Trip Advisor where you could check out Flights, Attractions, Deals, Maps, etc.  Of course my favorite thing to investigate was Dining.  The site rated the restaurants in the area from #1 - #87 (why 87?).  The ratings came from other travel guides and actual diners.  I discovered that the place everyone in the local area advised us to eat, and we didn’t, was rated #3. The highest rated restaurant we did eat in turned out to be #16.

Oh well, we really enjoyed it will have to revisit St. Augustine another time.  There are 85 more places to eat that I haven’t tried yet!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 2:36 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.