When you’re getting ready to go on a trip, one of the things you might neglect to think about is your luggage. You think about the hotel, airline tickets, clothing, etc…but until it’s time to pack, somehow luggage is never in your mind…or at least it isn’t in mine!

The worst is when your old luggage gets ripped or ruined on a trip, you say you’ll get something new…but then since it’s at least a few months until your next trip, you completely forget about it until the night before you leave when you take the luggage down from the attic.

If you’re planning on going on a trip soon, and you need luggage, Luggage Online has an additional 20% off on their entire site right now. Considering they usually have 70% off regular prices, an additional 20% off makes it even better!

This is going on through tomorrow night, so you have time to look and decide. Shipping is free if you spend at least $100.

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United Vacations currently has vacations on sale, starting at $299. You can book now through September 5th. These vacations include both airfare as well as hotel rooms. The $299 is for airfare and 2 nights in a hotel in Las Vegas. There are also many other destinations included in the sale (starting at $599) such as Orlando, Puerto Vallarta, and more.

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Looking to find the best prices for your next vacation, but don’t want to spend the time searching yourself, or going to multiple travel agents? How would you like it if they came to you!

At Tripology, you enter in the details about the trip you want to take, and then up to 3 travel agents will come to you with their quotes. It’s nice and easy, and you know you’ll get the best price!

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If you’re not sure where you want to vacation, but you don’t want to spend a lot of money, consider signing up for the FREE Travelzoo newsletter. Every Wednesday morning, you’ll get a list of their Top 20 deals.

These deals can be airfare, hotels, packages, cruises, car rentals, or more…and are always different. So if you’re not sure exactly where to go, this can help you find a great deal on a great vacation!

The best part is that it’s free, so you can just sign up, and spend a few seconds every Wednesday reading it until you see what sounds like a perfect vacation to you!

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If you’re anything like I am, you probably take a lot of pictures while on vacation. Now that most people have digital cameras, you know you can take pictures of anything you want, since you will have plenty of space to hold them. Of course, this means that when you come back from your trip, you will have a LOT of pictures, and many of them will be great!

If you want to have them printed out so that you can put them in a photo album, you might want to go with Snapfish right now. If you sign up as a new customer, you’ll get 50 free 4×6 prints, as well as a free collage. Think of all of the fun you can have picking out 50 prints, plus designing your own collage!

You really can’t beat the price, and their pictures come out well. I have used them before, and like the way their pictures come out. It’s a great way to get your photo album done cheaply!

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Don’t you hate that every time you check the price of a flight you want to take, it’s different? You never see the same price twice. You can look on a Wednesday afternoon, and get one price, but by Wednesday night it’s higher. Then the next day it might be a little lower again. How are you supposed to know when the best time to buy your airline tickets is if it’s always changing - going up and down?

Orbitz wants to make this easier for you. Buy your airline tickets whenever you want. If the prices go down and someone else buys a ticket on that same flight and gets a better price than you did, they’ll refund you the difference.

Now you don’t have to wait and hope that the prices will go down and not up. If you’re happy with the airline ticket price, buy it now…knowing that if the prices get better and someone else gets a better price, you’ll get that same price automatically!

I think that’s pretty cool. Of course it would be perfect if no matter what you’d get refunded for a lower price - if anyone else bought it or not - but let’s face it…that will never happen anywhere. So that’s pretty cool that Orbitz is willing to do this! They’re so big anyway that lots and lots of people use them to book their trips, so it shouldn’t be a problem having someone else book the same flight.

Hopefully we’ll see other travel companies join in.  This is a really cool idea!

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A few months ago I was very fortunate enough to get a cat. Halley (yes, named after the comet) is a great cat, and I’m thrilled to have her. But…we love to travel. So the question becomes, what do you do with your cat while you go on vacation?

Before getting a cat, I had always assumed I’d just leave the cat at home, and have someone come and check on her every other day. They’d give her canned food at that time, as well as clean out the litter box. If I were to go away for a whole week, I’d only need someone to stop by about 2-3 times. That shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Well, that was BEFORE we got Halley. This cat LOVES to eat, and I think would be very, very upset if she only got her canned food every other day. She always has water and dry food out, but she doesn’t really care for the dry food as much.

The second problem is that when she’s bored, she gets into trouble. We have seen it happen ourselves. For the first month she was here, she didn’t even notice that on our coffee table we had a tic-tac-toe board with little pieces on it. One afternoon she was bored, and a half hour after that all the pieces were all over the house.

So I’m not really sure I trust leaving her in the house for a week alone, since someone would only be in the house for a few minutes every other day. Even if it was every day, I’m not sure I trust her.

I could always put her in a kennel, but most of them seem to be for dogs! I found a total of 3 places within a 45 minute drive that I can take her. One is PetSmart. They have a PetsHotel where you can keep your cats or dogs while you go away. While I haven’t visited it yet, it looks like they are kept in cages, and aren’t played with - but are both fed and litter box cleaned daily. It’s only $14.00, so it’s the cheapest option, but I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with that. The other two places just board cats, and one is $26.00 a night (which there is NO way I’ll pay for her to stay…and would you believe it costs extra for them to play with her???) and one which costs $18.00 a night.

I will go visit the 2 lower priced ones, but I’m really confused. What would you do in my situation? Has anyone boarded their cat with good or bad results? Has anyone left their very friendly cat (she is ALWAYS in the same room with us….she even sleeps on my pillow with me!) alone for a week with good results? I’d love to hear any suggestions, as I have no idea what we should do, as this will be an ongoing problem since we love to travel.

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If you’re looking to plan a trip outside the country, you might be looking for a website that will help make it easier. Vayama is just that, and more. You put in the location you’re leaving from, as well as the destination (or all of the destinations) that you will be stopping at on your trip. It will then search over 100 airlines to find you the best prices and itineraries. They even have a nice map that will shoe you exactly how your flights will work out.

I just tried it on a trip I’m hoping to take in the next few years and was surprised at how easy the site was to use, and how nice the map was. The next time I am traveling abroad, I’ll be using this site!

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Want to go on vacation this summer, but don’t want to spend a lot of money to do so? Consider exchanging your home. What happens is you get to go on vacation where you want, and stay at someones home, and while you’re away, someone will stay at your home.

This way you don’t have to worry about paying for a hotel at all! You’ll be able to save your money for other things, such as souvenirs, or entrances to whatever it is you’re going to be doing.

It’s also a way to stay at a place where you’ll have a kitchen, so you don’t have to eat out for all of your meals. You’ll be able to stop at a supermarket, get the food you want, and eat in instead of having to spend your hard earned money on food for every meal. There’s still plenty of time to find something for this summer!

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Pictures are a great way to remember your vacation for years after you have come back. While you’ll always have your memories, sometimes after a few years (or even a few months!) you might be fuzzy on a few of the details. Did you get to see x, y, and z? Or only visit x and y, and you saw z on another trip. Lots and lots of pictures are a great way to remember your vacation. You’ll get to show others all of the great things you saw while on your vacation.

You’ll also get to go back and “live” your vacation over again any time you want. I love being able to go through all of my pictures of past trips, remembering what we did that day, and all of the great things I saw, no matter where I was. It’s also fun being able to show people the cool things you saw, since some things are so beautiful that words just won’t do.

One thing I enjoy doing while on vacations is to make sure I get some perfect pictures so that I can blow them up and put them on my walls. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much of a chance to get the perfect picture, but I have been able to buy some really nice prints of different destinations that I have been to, so that I can remember my vacation while looking at a perfect photograph of the destination.

Because let’s face it…sometimes you just can’t get the perfect picture. There are people in the way, or the sun is too bright, etc…So while most of the time you can take the picture yourself, other times it makes more sense to buy a poster and hang them on your wall. Then anytime you walk into a room you can remember the trip!

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