I disagree 100%. They change all the time depending on what cookies you have stored in your browser. You can prove it very easily by using two different browsers. For example, let’s say you’re using Firefox and you get a price change that looks suspicious like that. Just bring up the same site and search with IE or Chrome, and often you will see the original, cheaper price quoted. You can do the same thing by deleting cookies, but it can be tricky to pick the right ones to remove sometimes.

Travelocity does sneaky stuff all the time, and it seems like it started when they were bought by Expedia. I have clicked to book a hotel room and the room is suddenly not available at that price, and they tell me to search again or offer the room for a slightly (sometimes very) higher price. Just for kicks I will do the same search on a different browser and voila–the room is magically available again at the lower price!

Saw this on SD. Best discount I’ve seen this season if you’re a Costco member

Costco iTunes digital gift cards

$200 for $165, $100 for $84.50, $25 for $21.50

excellent find, My kids have played on their Plasma cars for YEARS. What’s funny is they’re mostly older teens now and STILL sometimes goof off on them when their friends are all over. We have an unfinished basement and they would sneak Christmas lights out of storage boxes and drape the studs and make light “tunnels” for them to drive under. Great memories. Can’t recommend highly enough. (assuming it’s still high quality and hasn’t fallen victim to crappy manufacturing)

Ok, this is all such awesome advice. That’s a great idea about using miles for business class–never would have crossed my mind, and I have long legs! I’ll do some research and planning and check back in. I want to get the tickets by January (our anniversary), and then we can sit down and decide what we want to do. Y’all have given me some great ideas. Thank you!

@honkinggoose Wow, that sounds amazing. I consider myself pretty skilled at planning domestic vacations, but I guess I’m not so confident about a foreign one. If we rent a car I guess I need to do some research on driving laws and licensing! They’re all left-side drivers over there, correct? Yikes! Thank you for the pointers.

@ruthie Thank you for the lead. I’ll look into them. Good point about the time to visit towns vs. being on a tour.

I would like to take my wife to the U.K. this coming April/May for our anniversary. I don’t have the slightest idea how to go about planning something like this and keeping it within a certain budget. We’ve cruised and traveled to Mexico, but that’s the extent of our foreign travels.

I’m thinking it would be best for our first time to go with a tour company. Costco has some packages that seem reasonable. We would only have about 10 days available, so we can only see and do so much.

I’m thinking we’d like to see London and also a castle or two in Ireland and Scotland. Both of us have ancestors from the U.K., and I think it would be cool to somehow rent a car and visit our ancestral towns. I don’t know how interested we would be in visiting Buckingham Palace, etc. this time around.

I think I have enough miles to make the airfare cheap or almost free. We are usually 3-star hotel people. What is a realistic budget for something like this–$4,000? $6,000?

I really have no idea the “right” or safest way to visit, so any hints or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Try this BestBuy link instead.

Thank you for the advice!!!

Thanks for the input. I got too busy and let the points expire. Oh well! I’ll have to see what the new program offers.