History Hound Travels

How are you liking our travels? I have to admit I am having a good time with this blog since I opened it up a bit more. I do need to do some work with the categories, I think, because having all these cities and countries just labeled “places” is totally not going to work for long, is it? I imagine I’ll break it down by continent, and I will try to get to that sometime this week, but please don’t hold me to it. My list of blog housekeeping tasks is long and growing longer by the day.

Not too long ago, I posted on my knitting blog about wanting to go to New York. I mentioned how I wanted to:

~see a Broadway Show
~climb the Statue of Liberty
~eat a hot dog on the street
~go to a concert at Carnegie Hall (I’d sing there if they’d let me, just to hear what I’d sound like in such a magnificent place)
~walk in Central Park
~shop on Fifth Avenue
~people watch in Times Square
~visit the Guggenheim
~go to the top of the Empire State Building
~if it were winter, I’d go skating at Rockefeller Center
~and of course, I’d have to finally meet Carla in real life

Yesterday, I found out about a NewYork City Sightseeing company that can help when you want to cram as much as possible into a limited amount of time. This company has several tours, and the “hop on, hop off” options allow you to basically build your own tours. And what can possibly compare to seeing the sites from the top of a double decker bus? The tours offer several departure pints, and a ticket is good for a full 24 hours! This Super Downtown Tour covers most of the things I wanted to do, and it’s only $67 for an adult ticket. So, who’s ready to go?

photo courtesy of wikitravel. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License v. 2.0

I was reading today on wiki about Singapore. Did you know it’s one of the few city-states in the world? It’s only 272 square miles!! The first records of settlement there date back to 200 AD, but it was sparsely populated until it was colonized by the British East India Company in 1819. The country became self governing in in 1959. Singapore is a republic with a market-based economy, and it’s considered to be the most business-friendly economy in the world. Interestingly enough, Singapore’s anti-population growth policies have been so effective that the government is now providing financial incentives for up to four children per family.

Almost 10 million tourists visited Singapore in 2006, and you know they needed places to stay. Hotels in Singapore range from the 2 star 1929 Hotel Singapore to the 5 star Fullerton. Charges for Singapore hotels vary widely with costs as low as $33 and as high as $592. Whatever your travel budget, Asia Hotels is ready to help you find hotels in Asia, and most other parts of the world as well.

This site is an awesome one! If the history of Ancient Egypt interest you at all, you will enjoy it. And frankly, I haven’t met anyone yet whose eyes did not light up at the mention of mummies. Egypt’s Golden Empire is put together by PBS, and you can find information about the series, as well as special features here.

I was just over at HotelsCombined.com, looking at hotel prices for Vegas in November. I planned to check in on the 8th and out on the 13th of November. I was shocked when th ereate came up at $175. That’s a lot less than I counted on for such a lengthy stay! HotelsCombined searches 30 travel sites at once, and that’s how they find the lowest prices. Guess that explains the 2007 Web 2.0 Awards by Seomoz.org, huh?

Right now, I am actually planning to stay with a friend of a friend, but if I find out I need a hotel, I will definitely be using HotelsCombined. And how do you like that?? A post about somewhere I am actually going, instead of just somewhere I just want to go. LOL!