Hotel Orrington, a pet friendly, four diamond hotel, located 2 blocks from the CTA station and 25 minutes from downtown, is offering a Summer Travel Package! Included in the package are:
deluxe king accommodations for 2
breakfast for two served in the Globe Cafe
2 summer breeze beverages in the hotel’s Indigo Lounge
2 CTA passes (Chicago Transit Authority, the local transportation system)
Weekday rates are $229/night + tax and Weekend rates are $265/night + tax.
For one hundred lucky Hertz customers, just 1 Euro (£1 or 1 CHF) a day is all it will cost to rent a vehicle, courtesy of a new Hertz promotion.
From July 15, 2007 until August 15, 2007, customers who rent a Compact Manual vehicle at participating locations in Europe will be eligible for a discounted rental price of 1 Euro (£1 or 1 CHF) per day. Visit www.hertz.com, click on the promotion banner found on the home page, then click on the “Quote It” button on the offer page. Enter your reservation information, a special rate of 1 Euro (£1 or 1 CHF) may display in the rate window.
Participating locations in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland (Dublin Airport only), Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal (Lisbon Airport only), Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Rentals must be booked between July 15, 2007 and August 15, 2007, and must take place between July 15, 2007 and November 30, 2007. There are 100 rentals available for the special 1 Euro (£1 or 1 CHF) discount price.
There may be no place like home, but sometimes that’s the whole point! Coming off the intensity of a world tour, home may seem…foreign. One minute you’re fighting to get on a bus in Montego Bay, the next minute you’re in your quiet, slightly stuffy study looking at a stack of bills on your desk. Post Tripum Depression!
I’ve got it bad, Divas. I was on a whirlwind adventure! It was me against Central Europe! I had no plan, no itinerary. I was a sponge! Over here were Serbians; over there Croats. Dracula’s tomb for breakfast and his castle for lunch.
Yesterday I went to the Tango Diva office and waited for the elevator. Having immersed myself in European floor numbering for three weeks, it never occurred to me that the elevator might be in the lobby. Displaying itself as on floor 1, I assumed it was a floor above me. I stood there and stood there.
It’s just that home feels so…homely! There’s the coffee shop and there’s the bakery. My best friends are still embroiled in love triangles, cat fights and conundrums. The mailman doesn’t even ring once—he’s got a key to the gate. (Of course there was that earthquake the other morning. My bed shook so much I almost fell out. But that’s not the kind of adventure I want…)
You know what I mean? I am a different person. I have changed. And where is that manifested? I went and went and went, yet here I am. Home is an opiate threatening to lull me into my old self. But I am someone totally new now. Open, aware, a PART of things! Stephanie Block, World Citizen. Stephanie Block, Nomadic Traveler. Stephanie Block, Adventurer and Explorer.
I resist and defy you, Stephanie Block, TiVo User. Nor Stephanie Block, Tea Sipper. I am aghast at Me, the Grocery Shopper, and I don’t even recognize Me the Pining Lover. Who are these people and what are they doing in my house?
Most of all, what am I doing in my house when there’s a whole big world out there??? Usually, home is a perfectly wonderful place to come back to. San Francisco is a beautiful and reassuring place to land. But this time, it’s different. This time, I broke through the sound barrier, the soul barrier, and somehow I’m on the other side. How did Alice feel leaving heart-queens and white rabbits? They talk about through the looking glass but hardly ever discuss back through…
Divas, there is no rest for me. The only cure is to pack my bags and leave home to the homely!
United Airlines is offering great coast to coast deals from August 16, 2007 to January 11, 2008 for only $99 each way!! Sale ends around July 26 so book your flights now divas! Some examples of flights for $99 are:
Los Angeles to Baltimore
Philidelphia to Los Angeles
Seattle to New Orleans
Baltimore to Oakland
Chicago to San Diego
Denver to Providence
Burbank to San Antonio
Las Vegas to Wahington, D.C.
Orange County to Nashville
Hartford to Albuquerque
Spokane to Baltimore
El Paso to Providence
Travel on Tuesday, Wednesday or Saturday for the lowest fares.
Time to walk like an egyptian and explore Cleopatra’s country in this fabulous 6 night package starting out in Cairo, Egypt! Explore the pyramids and cruise the Nile for $1099/person.
If 40 is the new 20, then 60 is the new 30! All of you 55 and over divas pack your bags and head to Rockland, Maine because "Seniority has its Privileges" in this town and the Historic Inns of Rockland, Maine are offering a 25% discount if you stay with them in September!
The price starts at $460 for a 3 night midweek package (any 3 consecutive days between Sun and Thursday). Included in the package is:
Okay divas, how great would it be to win 20 of the best airfare, hotels, cruises, car rentals and vacation packages? ALL TWENTY!!! All you have to do is tell a friend about the Travelzoo Top 20 by August 2, 2007 and you will be entered in your chance to win all of the top 20 list or accept a cash prize of $5000! Any friend who signs up for the Top 20 will be automatically entered as well! So go ahead, spread the word and cross your fingers because you may be the next winner!
According to Audrey Hendley, Vice President of American Express Travel, "Many women consider their ‘girls-getaways’ to be the highlight of the year." Agree? I sure do. Therefore I think its time to plan another one of those "girl time vacations" and i’ve sure got the deal for ya’ll! Let the inner cowgirl outta ya, in this "skirts and spurs" women only package in Big Sky, Montana. Yee Haaa! The package includes:
In the mood to get away from your not-so-exciting hometown and spend some time in two of the worlds hippest cities? Take a break from reality and fly over to Paris and London and become a city girl for a few days. This trip includes:
RT airfare (fly to Paris from S.F. and back to S.F. from London)
flight from Paris to London
3 nights in Paris @ the Kyriad Bercy Village Hotel
I’ve hit the fifty country mark, Divas!! I landed in Bucharest, Romania, tonight, and it marked my fiftieth country visited on this earth. How exciting!!! Since we last spoke, I’ve been to, sorry my Bosnian Divas, but Scare-ajevo, then Belgrade, Serbia, where I met up with my fabulous gal pal Wendee.
Now I don’t mean to be cruel. I think that in a couple years, Sarajevo will be a great place to visit in Europe, but I have to admit that traveling through alone, I did not feel comfortable but a little on edge the whole time. I could only find two or three hotels, and most of them were on the outskirts of the old city, on a bland, industrial highway of sorts. My Holiday Inn, bless its heart, strove to retain its glamour from the Olympic days, which it proudly announced on its shock of cubist, neon-colored exterior. But alas. How times have changed.
Pock-marked buildings with sharp shrapnel memories lined every street, and at every turn, Sarajevo is still reeling both physically and psychologically from its macabre title of suffering from the longest seige in modern history. I could hardly blame the burly men who shoved me out of the way at every turn, every cafe and store…they had waited long enough to for their lives to return to semi-normal…
The one glimpse of hope was a very lounge-y, super cool string of smart cafes where impossibly hip and gorgeous youth sipped drinks to the beat of dance music in the afternoon. Early twenty-somethings, this is surely the hope of the future of Sarajevo.
Belgrade? A completely different story. Danube River cruises and party barges, lots of ice cream shops to beat the heat, beautiful monuments and a nightlife to rival NYC, Belgrade totally impressed my girl Wendee and me. We managed to grab one of only 9 apartments (the Presidential Suite no less!) at the very chic Aleksandar Palas Hotel. The staff was fabulous, and although we did have trouble adjusting to "Serbian time," attempting to make city tour plans that never were (the Saturday tour decided to cancel itself as we waited in the heat for it), we laughed, grabbed iced coffees at the fort in a very cool cafe, and even watched pirated DVDs that we bought off the streets in our big ol’ penthouse.
I can’t wait to see what Romania will have in store! Let’s celebrate my fiftieth together, Divas!
