Fall is coming to the Northern hemisphere, spring to the Southern, and travel bargains abound. Here’s a selection of some September travel deals that caught our eye.
As always, you can stay updated on our latest travel deal posts by . . .
• going directly to our travel hot deals page;
• or, getting a Kindle subscription to our travel blog;
• or, perhaps best of all, subscribing to our RSS feed and getting all of our travel posts delivered directly to your email inbox or to your RSS aggregator;
or—why not?—act on all three of those options.
Please note that most of the offers below are for a limited time. And with that, here’s to happy, high-value travel!
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Welcome to the first in an ongoing series of posts Spot Cool Stuff is launching on cool travel deals. Awesome airfare discounts, spectacular cruise sales, reduced resort rates, guidebook bargains, high-value all-inclusive vacations—we keep an eye out for current deals on them all, aggregating the best into a single “travel bargains” post.
Look for new travel bargains, with the latest deals & discounts, to be published once or twice a month. Oh, man! How can I stay updated on the latest deals? you are surely asking yourself now. Well, you could . . .
• go directly to our travel hot deals page;
• or, get a Kindle subscription to our travel blog;
• or, perhaps best of all, subscribe to our RSS feed and get all of our travel posts delivered directly to your email inbox or to your RSS aggregator;
or—why not?—act on all three of those options.
Please note that all of the offers below are for a limited time. And with that, here’s to happy, high-value travel!
Continue →
Many people, even those well-traveled, have never heard of the rugged, tropical nation of Dominica. Tourism does not dominate here in the way it does many other small Caribbean islands where development often crowds out ecological concerns. Much of Dominica is green, wild and untouched. No wonder Dominica was chosen as the filming location for the “remote feeling” outdoor scenes of Pirates Of the Caribbean.
If you are looking for a Caribbean destination with magnificent diving, fantastic hiking and lush jungles, you should choose Dominica too. The natural beauty of this place makes it one of Spot Cool Stuff’s favorite island nations. Spend some time here and you’ll come away wondering why more people haven’t heard of this paradise.
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Spot Cool Stuff’s single favorite piece of travel writing, the David Foster Wallace essay A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, is a humorous accounting of the absurd side of taking a cruise—that part of cruising in which overweight Hawaiian shirt-wearing passengers are herded between crowded shuffleboard tables, bad buffets and overpriced tourist-trap shore excursions.
Your next cruise needn’t be like that. Your cruise can (and should!) be a fun thing you’ll want to do again. And that fun, interesting cruise can also represent an excellent travel value. Our tips for finding cool, yet affordable, cruises:
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You like camping but your partner prefers more glamorous travel. The solution? Glamping. Glamorous camping. Like that on offer at the The Treebones Resort.
Treebones, located on California’s scenic Big Sur coast, is a resort that offers the perfect romantic getaway for you both. Accommodations here are in yurts, large circular tents originally the domain of Central Asian nomads and made of sheepskin.
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Spot Cool Stuff has spotted The Spot. The Spot Satellite Messenger, that is. This rugged cell-phone sized device allows your friends and family to pinpoint your exact location while you are out on an adventure and allows you to signal for help should need it.
Here’s how it works:
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The Wailua meanders all the way to Mt. Wai’ale’ale, which is famous for being the single wettest spot on earth
Almost everyone knows you can take a cruise to Hawaii. Less well known is the cruise that goes into Hawaii.
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Conjure an image of what’s it is like to go on a cruise. Are you picturing buffet dinners? On-deck spinning classes? Retirees playing shuffleboard? Many cruises really are like that. But if you’re looking for a different sort of cruise scene consider traveling by cargo ship.
Cargo ship travel is the un-cruise. There’s nothing fabricated about it. Every day thousands of freighters ply the high seas. Some of them have extra state rooms and accept passengers to tag along for the ride. This is as “real” as travel gets.
Of course, cargo ship cruising is not for everyone. Cargo ships don’t have swimming pools, evening entertainment, rock climbing walls or organized mixers on Lido decks. Go on a cargo ship cruise and there might be as many as four or five other paying passengers like yourself. Or, you may be the only one. And while cargo ships often have comfortable sleeping quarters they’re unlikely to be luxurious.
To book passage on a cargo ship you can go directly through some shipping lines. But we recommend working through a travel agent that can vouch for the quality of the food and accommodations and can make sure your itinerary includes sufficient shore leave time. One of the best agents for cargo ship cruises is Intrepid Travel. Here’s a look at their five cool cargo cruise ship itineraries:
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