Summer Surfing Expedition

Summer Surfing Expedition...By Steve Plunkett

It seems almost everyone I know is taking a vacation, or planning one. One of my co-workers is the cheap airfare Queen, she can find airfares for next to nothing and all she uses is the Internet. If you don’t know by now, the EASIEST way to find things on the Internet is to put “www.” before something and “com” after it. So check out http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.bestfares.com/. Believe it or not, she also told us about the most obvious, http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.reservations.com/. Some other great airline travel sites are, http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.aa.com/ (American Airlines), http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.iflyswa.com/, (Southwest Airlines), http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.funjet.com/, a general bargain trip site. These are just the sites, which someone could rattle off the top of their head. Now it is summer and there is real surfing, so if you want the scoop on the Hawaii surfing scene, check out, http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.h3o.com/. Now if you’re not planning on leaving the house, be sure to check out http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.easttexasbrick.com/, for some killer bar-b-que grills, and patio furniture. Better yet, if you shall be golfing this summer, (who isn’t), take a look at http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.cheapgolfballs.com/.
I know you are saying, “Yeah right, Steve, how am I supposed to find all these things?” Well, let me show you, need a walk in the park? Try http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.centralpark.org/, if putting “.com” or “.net” in front of the domain name doesn’t work, try “.org”. Give up? Pick a search engine, as you know search engines are like the card catalog at the library, just places for web sites to be cataloged.
The most popular search engine is Yahoo, and they have many links for travel of all kinds, look at, http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.yahoo.com/Recreation/Travel/. An important top, capitalization after the domain name (the .com part) is important to remember to capitalize the “R” and “T”. Excite is the second most popular search engine and can be found at http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.excite.com/. Several friends and myself play an online game at http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.moongate.net/. Sometimes people from all over the globe will meet in one location, after talking to each other online. This year the “Moongate Gathering” is in New Orleans. Having only been to New Orleans once, and that was only for about 8 hours, I decided to do my homework.
Time to get a pen if you are reading this in a waiting room, or go to Brookshire’s and pick up a copy of your own. Shall we take a quick trip in cyberspace, step by step?
Step One. Figure our where you want to go. (We are using New Orleans).Step Two. Once you are at the Excite home page, click on “travel”.Step Three. Click on “Destinations”.Step Four. Pick continent.Step Five. Luckily on the next page they had spotlighted New Orleans, but you can pick the state or country at this point. Then select the city.Step Six. Look or print, everything you need to know is on this page or linked off of it.Step Seven. At this point I found hotels, restaurants, and other places to go. This is where all the good stuff is. Luckily the hotel we are staying in had a Red Star next to the name. “The Inn on Bourbon”, now I haven’t been there yet, but this is a vacation not a drinking expedition. This particular hotel sits right on Bourbon Street and is the favorite for people during Mardi Gras. The hotel has a balcony famous for throwing beads off of during the parades. A good friend of mine, however is partial to the Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street near Bourbon Street. She says staying at the Hotel Monteleone is the best way to experience the French Quarter.
Speaking of expeditions, a friend of mine called Ballistic and needed help on a Microsoft web site, http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.expedia.com/. I walked her through the registration and registered for myself while I was there. I couldn’t find any info about “The Inn on Bourbon” at this site so I decided to change search engines. The main reason why you want to look in more than just one search engine is because some web sites don’t submit to all the search engines. It would be really hard to submit to ALL 753 search engines. I gave up after 4 days of trying. There are search engines that search other search engines, they are called “meta” search engines. The best one is http://web.archive.org/web/20010524032330/http://www.metacrawler.com/, it searches the most popular search engines for the top results. If you are trying to search quickly, this is a tool you will use everyday. Metacrawler allows you to select “any”, for example on the words “New Orleans”, it will find web pages, with the word “New or “Orleans”. If you select “all” it will find only those web pages that contain both “new” and “Orleans”. The best part is searching using a phrase, when you click on this choice it shows those pages, that contain only the words “New Orleans” in sequence. This will save you time and headaches, the reason you are taking a vacation after all.