My wife and I, along with everyone living within a stone’s throw of Washington D.C., benefit from an abundance of national landmarks. Within Washington D.C. there are over eighty national landmarks, many of which are clustered around the Mall. In one trip, you could see dozens of our nation’s great treasures absolutely free (and if you do come to the Mall, practically every museum in the area is free too).

If you live elsewhere, don’t fret. There are over 2,460 landmarks in the United States. New York takes top honors with a 256 according to Wikipedia, with Delaware bringing up the rear with five. In Maryland, there are 71 and we’ve only gone to one of them - the Bollman Truss Railroad Bridge (by accident too). You could go to one landmark each weekend and be busy until the end of next year!

Check out your state and find a piece of America’s history to explore this weekend!

(Photo by Dean.Franklin)

Nearly four years ago my fiancee and I went on our first cruise ever, a four night trip to the Western Caribbean in December that cost us approximately $300 per person (not including airfare). The cruise’s port of call was Miami and we were able to score cheap $70 tickets from BWI to Orlando, both were burgeoning Southwest hubs at the time. We were able to find such a screaming hot deal (a cruise for under a hundred bucks a day is pretty sweet) because we signed up for the cruise about a month before it set sail. It was one of those “Last Minute” deals on Travelocity (or Expedia or whoever, I forget which) and it was possibly only because we were keeping our eyes out for a last minute type vacation. However, with the great reward of a good deal comes a bit of risk.

Last minute deals are so great because they represent revenue that would otherwise be lost to the company offering it. The cruise ship will set sail with a full complement of crew and supplies regardless of the actual passenger count and an empty cabin represents a lot of lost revenue so selling it at a discount to the rack price is something they’re very much willing to do. It’s why hotels and airlines sometimes have last minute fares and discounts, an empty room or seat is lost revenue.

The flip side is the risk involved in waiting. If you really want to go on a cruise, say for your honeymoon, then you probably don’t want to risk waiting for a last minute deal because a last minute deal may never come. For example, we booked our honeymoon flights for Hawaii several months in advance when the deal looked good to us (it’ll run a little under $700 a piece from Baltimore to Honolulu, which seemed like a good price for the time we’re going); we weren’t willing to see if there was going to be a fare sale a month beforehand.

So, if you have a little flexibility, consider waiting until the “last minute,” roll the dice, and maybe you’ll go on a vacation you never expected - say to Iceland to ride some tiny horses and fight in the snow (I had a few friends do that, they have a blast). Many of the travel sites have “last minute” sections or you can always scour deal sites like Travelzoo for great last minute bargains (I’m a fan of their Top 20 deals too).

I love travel accommodation search engines like Kayak because they allow you to search almost the entire pantheon of travel providers to bring you the best deals. Kayak is doubly good for places like hotels because they have integration with Google Maps to give you an idea of where all the places actually are, crucial for hotels and rental cars. If you use them as much as I have, you’ll probably being to notice one important detail - the prices listed on Kayak (and other sites like Expedia, Travelocity, etc.) are $5 higher than on the airline site itself. That $5 is Kayak’s cut for sending them your business and you can save that by simply going to the site itself and booking the ticket.

One word of warning, sometimes the airline’s site won’t have the same price. It might be that the search engine has a special deal of some sort with the travel provider (or it could be something else, who knows) but this trick doesn’t always work. I’ve also found that this trick doesn’t work as often with hotels and car rentals, there doesn’t seem to be as clean of a $5 markup.

Lastly, all those search engines won’t have two important budget carriers in their results - Southwest and AirTran (and maybe a few other smaller outfits). To get those flights you’ll have to go through the site’s own website (though some of their partners will appear in the results, such as ATA, a partner of Southwest’s).

If you’re out of ideas for what to do, a great place to check out is your local tourism office’s website. Each state has their own and chances are that your local area may have one as well. The sites each vary in terms of quality and on some you can request brochures and other little kitchy things; it all depends on availability and how aggressive each state’s tourism department is. I’ve received several free travel mugs, booklets, and other items upon request (the coffee travel mug I used this morning was from Louisiana).

I’ve included after the jump a link to each of the department or division or office of tourism for your convenience.

If you happen to live in the Philadelphia or Denver area, both of those Mints offer a free tour of their facilities. Unfortunately those are the only two that offer tours at all. For more information on tours for the Denver facility, click here, and for information on tours for the Philadelphia facility, click here.

Tours cover both the present state of coin manufacturing as well as the history of the Mint. Learn about the craftsmanship required at all stages of the minting process, from the original designs and sculptures to the actual striking of the coins. (tour information website)

If you’re a resident living in the Washington D.C. area, there is a US Mint Kiosk in Union Station that showcases some of the products for sale but not much else. “The kiosk offers the latest commemorative and annual coins, the popular new quarters, collector maps, medals, and a variety of coin jewelry.”

Folks who don’t live anywhere near any of those can go on a free Virtual Tour, if you have Macromedia Flash 7.

More Low Cost Weekend Ideas

I just wrote up the review for Yahoo Farechase for Flights… then I flipped over to the hotel search. It’s ridiculously tasty too. Think of everything that I loved about the flight service and it applies for the hotel search as well, except now that you’re talking hotels (which means static physical locations) you’re also talking maps, JAVAX maps.

The JAVAX maps means you can see where all the hotels are in relation to one another (without having to use some arcane mapping system born in the 1990’s like Mapquest) and to where you need to be.

What do I like?
1. The map, of course! It goes beyond a slick Web2.0 JAVAX map, but what they do with that map. First fiddle with all the refining check boxes until you get the hotel characteristics you’re looking for and then sort by the criteria you want (probably price). Then, look at the map. It has little bubbles for each of the hotels listed in the search results that conform to your specifications. Now scroll the map around and watch the list get updated. If you mouseover the results list, the bubble corresponding to that hotel turns from orange to white. Mouse over the map and a hotel, the hotel information pops up.

2. Sites Searched I put in Boston and the site searched over thirty other sites. I then put in Pittsburgh, also searched thirty or so sites. There is a lot of data out there and it looks like Farechase is pinging a whole lot of them.

What they could do to improve it?
1. Add a method to add your one waypoints on the map, for say the convention center you are going to or your friend’s house. It’d be nice to know, with a little more precision, how far you are from a particular address.
2. Add a smoking/non-smoking preference in the hotel rooms.

I’ve used Expedia and Travelocity in the past (they use the same databases, my choice all depends on whether or not I want to see Travelocity’s roaming gnome, good marketing guys!) but both are about to be supplanted by Yahoo Farechase… because Yahoo uses JAVAX and it’s fast. No more waiting on that “Searching airfare’s screen” that always seems to take forever, I think Farechase is going to capture some of that travel search market until the big boys start using JAVAX.

Here’s what I like about Yahoo Farechase:
1. Yahoo Farechase remembers your searches. How many times have you hit back on any of the other engines and had to tediously enter your information again? I hate it. I hate it with a passion. Yahoo remembers it. And not only does she remember it, when you click it she just populates the boxes so you can change them as you see fit, she doesn’t automatically start running the search again.

2. That progress bar means something. And they show you intermediate results. Farechase searches through all the airlines in its database (American Airlines, America West, US Airways, United, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Alaska Airlines andContinental) and populates the list as it gets data.

3. That JAVAX filtering is sweet. The “Refine Results” panel allows you to check and uncheck departure times, airports, airlines, and the number of stops - each time updating the results without having to reload the page.

4. Forget the Airport Code? Just type in the city it’s in, slowly, and a drop down box will appear with possible airports and cities that you could be looking for. Very nice.

Basically I see Farechase as a tool I’d use instead of Expedia, Travelocity or any of the other flight search engines but, as with the others, you still need to check Airtran and Southwest Airlines’ websites directly for their fares. Farechase gets two thumbs up from me.

Oh, and if you think this is cool, just wait until you use it for hotels.