Here are some photos of the trip to Vegas that I’ve mentioned a million times this week.

Getting There

We had a super early flight and couldn’t check in yet when we got to Vegas so I was grumpy.

But after I took a nap I was a happier camper.

Inside The Hotels / Casinos

I already showed you all the free things we did at the Bellagio. Here are some other highlights from indoors:

The Pinball Hall of Fame

We went to see this free museum which is off the strip. It is filled with old arcade games, mostly pinball machines. They have index cards on them telling the history of the machine, a bit about the game, info on the artist and game designer, etc. You can get quarters to play the games, which we did. I also played Ms. Pacman, which I excel at, and I beat the high score on the machine. (I had about 112,000.) Woo-hoo.

Out on the Strip

The new City Center buildings are so wacky.

Tags: las vegas, Travel

I have dropped hints here and there that my vacation over the past few weeks exhausted me. I tried to remain upbeat because I definitely value the time that I got to spend with my siblings. That’s always a joy. But the truth is that I don’t like vacations. You aren’t supposed to say that. Everyone loves vacations. You aren’t supposed to complain about having extended time away from home. But I love my home. And although I love to see new things, I don’t love traditional vacations.

I Love My Life

I have set up my “real life” in such a way that it really is the life that I want. I love the city where I live. I love the schedule that I keep. I love the work that I do. I love the friends that I have. I’m not saying that I never want to get away but for the most part, I want to be living the life that I’m living. I’ve got no desire to get away from it and miss it when I’m not in it.

My Ideal Vacation

I do want to travel. I want to see other things and other places. I want to spend time with people I know who live in other parts of the world. But the truth is that my ideal vacation is an impossible one. Because what I would love would be able to take a vacation once every month or two but one that only lasts for three days and requires absolutely no travel time. Let me explain.

Travel Problems

I have had more than my fair share of travel problems and it always makes me kind of dread the travel part of a trip. This sounds like an exaggeration but I kid you not … family and friends often wonder if they should book a separate plane from me because I have had so many problems. Like that time a group of us tried to take the normal one hour flight from San Francisco to Vegas and there was a freak snowstorm so we circled over Vegas for awhile and ended up in Phoenix for the night. Doesn’t sound bad? Last year when I was coming back from the East Coast, I went to check on to my plane and was told that the plane didn’t exist. What? I had my boarding information and the confirmation number and the exact info on the plane’s times and everything printed directly from the site but apparently there is no such thing as the flight path that I was booked on; my plane literally did not exist … it took me more than twenty four hours to get home. So, I’d prefer to avoid travel. I’d like to just be able to beam from my home to the spot I want to be in, spend three days there and beam back.

Why Three Days?

I love doing new things. I love seeing art galleries and live performances and various sights. I like walking around in new places and encountering new things. But I don’t like doing it day after day after day. I guess I’m an introvert at heart. People assume I’m extroverted because I’m personable and I do love talking with people but I get my energy from the time I have alone to process and reflect … being with people drains me a little bit at a time and too many days in a row of doing thing after thing after thing makes me cranky. I think it would be ideal to spend about three days in a cool place doing all of the fun things like aquariums and hiking and urban exploring and so on and so forth, then to beam home and have time to process, write about the experience, relax, organize the photos from the trip, etc. And get back to my real life.

Since This Isn’t Possible …

Obviously, this isn’t possible. I can’t beam myself from one place to another. And I’m not going to go to far away places that I want to see (Reykjavik, New Zealand) for only three days because I realize that’s a waste of time and money. I’d rather waste a little energy and have the longer experience. Nevertheless, I wish it were possible and I’ve been thinking a lot about what types of general vacations I prefer that would be more in line with my travel style. Some ideas:

• Travel to close by places for three days. Weekend trips are fun. I can see flying to San Diego for three days (minus that whole plane travel problem) and enjoying it. If I can get people to meet me for three days in a place then I’d be happy. Actually, I think the Vegas trip I just did for four days with Mom and Sis would have been ideal if it hadn’t fallen right on the heels of so much other travel.
• Plan downtime. For longer trips, I think I actually need to start planning several days of downtime in a row each week. It’s hard for me to do this because if I’m traveling with someone else then it feels like such a party pooper to say I’m staying in my room alone for three days. But the truth is that I’d be a much happier travel if we did stuff together for three days and then I hid in my room for two or three days and then resumed doing stuff.

So we’ll see. I don’t have any trips planned for the near future. I try to go somewhere for my birthday each April but that may not happen this year. And the next big trip I have planned is just a summer weekend at Yosemite. So it’s a non-issue for the time being. And I did enjoy my trip, despite these gripes.

Tags: ideal vacation, introvert extrovert, Travel, travel styles, vacation

I just returned from a really great trip home to Tucson. The point of the trip was, of course, to visit my family. However I ended up actually doing a lot of fun things during my stay. I went hiking in the desert with my mom, sis and the dogs. I went to a terrifically unique book reading by Sausalito author Richard Polsky with my dad and sister. I saw not-so-great-but-still-unique Aztec dancers. And I got a chance to get a new look at a place I’d been before that’s a Tucson attraction of sorts: Old Town Artisans.

Old Town Artisans is a set of stores that are all grouped together in Downtown Tucson. In the center of them is a courtyard where there are live music performances and other things to see and do. I had been here before because there are musicians featured there every year during the Tucson Folk Festival which I used to attend frequently with my dad. I had checked out some of the shops in the place before but never explored the area in depth.

It turns out that the shops are all housed in what used to be a large home. I learned this because my sister got to talking to a vendor in the courtyard who makes Native-American-style pottery using the clay that she digs up herself from the local riverbeds. It turned out that this woman used to work for the place and was very interested in Tucson history so she knew all about the building. She ended up giving us a little tour of the shops to show us about the way that it was built.

The tour ended up providing us with a lot of little tidbits of Tucson history that I didn’t really have much awareness of before now. The building was constructed in the nineteenth century. At the time it was the home of a single extended family – housing great-grandparents, great-grand-children and everyone in between. Our guide walked us through the building and pointed out things that I never would have noticed on my own – like the areas of the roof that were built from old wine barrels, the packing crates that the family arrived there with and ribs from old saguaro cacti. We learned that the pine used to construct part of the building was taken from Mt. Lemmon but it took about six weeks to go up to the mountain in a horse and buggy and bring that wood back down. These days we consider Mt. Lemmon a short drive up to see a nice scenic view of the city. How different it was back then!

The woman that was giving us the tour even had some old pictures of what the building looked like over one hundred years ago. At one point it had been turned into a general store complete with a root cellar in the bottom and a canvas painting on the outside. We saw these pictures and got to stand in the store that exists there today which is, of course, quite different from the old general store. We learned that this place had been everything from a distillery to a brothel. It was almost torn down not so long ago but was then saved by someone interested in preserving Tucson history and is now the home to artists working in the Southwestern style.

It’s not that this place is particularly fascinating exactly. It’s not that the art here to see is stunning. It’s just that this is one of those little Tucson gems that I’ve been to but never actually paid attention to before. It goes to show that there are new things to be discovered everywhere that you might spend your time even if you think that you already know all that there is to know about a place. Keep your eyes open, talk to other people about the places that you visit and be willing to learn something new every day!

Tags: old town artisans, smartchick, Travel, tucson

All around San Francisco are these sculptural hearts.

This one is in Union Square along with several others. I love checking them out when I’m down there.

However, I also love it when I stumble across one while I’m just walking through the city. That was the case with this one:

Tags: hearts, images, Photos, San Francisco, Travel

I don’t actually spend as much time in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park as I should. I really love this part of the city. I really love that a city which is so geographically small can support a park that is so big. ( It’s larger than Central Park, I believe.) I just don’t make it over there nearly as often as I ought to.

There’s so much to see in Golden Gate Park that it really requires multiple trips throughout the year to check everything out. I recently compiled a list of twenty things to see in this park and the list doesn’t even scratch the surface of what you could check out there if you wanted to.

My problem is that I don’t trek over to that side of the city very much. It’s really only a few miles away from me but it’s a couple of bus rides to get there and there’s always so much else to do in the city that somehow I manage to miss out on that part of San Francisco a lotl.

The other problem is that I always see the same things when I go to the park. I stick to the limited area around 9th Avenue where there’s a cluster of attractions – the Botanical Gardens, the Japanese Tea Garden, the deYoung museum, the California Academy of Sciences … If I have guests in town then I’ll see a few other major attractions like the windmill and tulip garden. Otherwise, I don’t venture around the park much.

I’ll have to make that a goal for this year – to see and do more in Golden Gate Park!

Tags: attractions, golden gate park, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, parks, San Francisco, things to do, Travel

If you were going to spend some time visiting Alabama, what would you check out while you were there? I haven’t spent a lot of time there myself. I don’t have any particular plans to visit the state anytime soon, but I do have some idea of what I’d want to see if I do make it there.

Some of the things I’d see in Alabama include:

• Gantts Quarry. This is an old quarry and ghosttown. Since I come from Arizona, I’ve seen a lot of towns like this. I love to check out how the ones in other parts of the country compare to those in my home state.
• Alabama Constitution Village. This is one of those places that’s designed to look like a town looked back in the nineteenth century. I kind of have a love for these places although I’ve only been to a few.
• The Tennessee River. I’ve heard that there are a lot of fun activities that take place along this river. I’d probably stay in Decatur, Alabama and check out some of those activities while I was in the state.
• Festivals. Alabama has some interesting Alabama festivals including a hot air balloon festival and a festival devoted to peanuts. I’d probably try to time my trip to the state to check out some of those things.

Check out my article on ten Alabama cities if you’re interested in what else there is to see in Alabama.

Tags: alabama, alabama attractions, cities, states, Travel, vacation

Have you ever thought of the possibility of actually making money off of your summer vacation? Most people don’t even think about this but it’s actually not that difficult to do if you have something of an entrepreneurial spirit and a creative side.

I usually do it by writing about my travels. Travel writing for blogs and magazines can help to offset the cost of vacations that you’re already taking. If you get really lucky, you might eventually be able to go to new destinations on someone else’s dime if you’ll write about it for them.

Writing isn’t the only way to make money from summer vacations though. Check out the other ideas that I have for this in my recent article titled 10 Ways to turn your Summer Vacation into Cash. I’d love to know if there are any other ideas that you have so drop a comment here if you think of something else to add!

Tags: kathryn vercillo, make money, Personal Finance, summer vacation, Travel

When I was 21, I spent about a month just hanging out in Florida. I lived out of the back of my pickup truck, camping in parking lots near the beach and staying with friends of friends. It was October. Most of the tourists were gone. The weather was beautiful. I have good memories from the trip.

I didn’t go to all of the popular destinations in Florida. I was broke so there didn’t seem much point in heading somewhere like Orlando, for example. I didn’t like all of the popular spots that I did see; Miami was absolutely unappealing to me in every way. But I did see several places I liked.

For example, I was a bigger fan of Jacksonville than I thought I would be. I think I must really enjoy RiverWalks because I also liked San Antonio, TX more than I thought I would and the RiverWalk was part of the reason why.

I also really loved Vero Beach which is a small town about halfway down the East Coast of Florida. I spent about a week there. Mostly I hung out on the beach. The water was warm and the waves were relaxing. But I also found a coffee shop in the town that I liked and I just generally enjoyed the vibe there.

I didn’t get the chance to check out the Keys at all so I’d like to have that oportunity if I ever go back to Florida. And I’d like to see the Everglades again because that was some really interesting nature that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

Check out the top ten cities to visit in Florida.

Tags: fl cities, florida, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, Travel, vacation

I mentioned earlier this week that I’m interested in the idea of owning a bed-and-breakfast someday and that I’m toying with the idea of trying to rent out an extra room in my apartment to people who are vacationing in the area to see if this is something that I’d truly enjoy doing later in life. The one big concern that I have is the safety risk that you open yourself up to when you open your home to strangers.

For the most part I’m not worried about this. I’ve done a lot of traveling throughout the country and done a lot of things that could have been risky – such as using Craigslist Rideshare to get from one place to another or staying in the home of a pen pal who I’d never met in person. I believe that I’m good at screening people online and am willing to trust my gut instinct and end any endeavor that seems like it could go awry.

Nevertheless, the thought does have to cross your mind that you never truly know what you’re going to get when you bring someone into your home. And for that matter, travelers themselves face risks when going to stay in someone’s home. (See my recent article that offers safety tips for couchsurfers.) When you decide to engage in budget travel practices, you open yourself up to more threats than you face when staying in luxury places.

Is it worth it to save the money? I tend to think that it is but only if you’re smart about it. Learning about how to be safe when using budget transportation and staying in budget accommodations is simply the responsible thing to do if you’re going to be safe while traveling. You can have some great experiences when traveling on the cheap but don’t be dumb about it!

Tags: budget travel, frugal travel, save money, Travel, travel safety

One of the vague dreams that I have for my life is to own a bed and breakfast in a nice summer-y location someday. I’d like to have a place to get away to for a few months out of every year, a place where I could spend time just getting to know new people and enjoying the nature around me. I haven’t ever worked to make that happen but it’s an idea I’ve always been toying with.

A mostly-unrelated thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is how to save money on travel. I like traveling to new places as well as visiting friends and family around the nation but it’s always so expensive. In researching different budget travel ideas, I keep coming across the idea of home swaps. Researching those led me to start thinking about a similar option which is renting out a room in my place to travelers interested in coming here.

That doesn’t have a lot to do with my own travel other than increasing my income but it does have to do with my old B&B idea. I may not have a B&B but I could start to see if that’s something that I’d like to explore further by taking in guests now and seeing what the pros and cons are in action. I live in a great space with extra room and could use a new steady stream of income so maybe this is an option. I haven’t made a decision about it yet but it’s something to toy with – a creative solution to many things in my life right now and perhaps even a glimpse into my future.

Tags: bed and breakfast, earn money, kathryn vercillo, Personal Finance, save money, Travel