South Carolina’s Grand Strand is gifted with blue skies, sun-bleached sand, golden sunshine, curling breakers and gentle breezes. The extraordinary natural beauty of this coastline has attracted visitors for nearly a century.
The Grand Strand is an island with a 60-mile oceanfront and three roads connecting it to the mainland. Surrounded on the north and the west by the Intracoastal Waterway, the east by the Atlantic Ocean and the south by Winyah Bay, the Grand Strand can be shut off from the outside world by closing four bridges, which gives the impression of its being a world unto itself.
Myrtle Beach and the other towns that dot this long island stretch, have become havens for visitors year round. From Little River to Pawleys Island, there are a dazzling variety of restaurants, as well as fantastic nightlife, concerts and theater, museums, interesting shops, and recreational pursuits for the whole family.
Myrtle Beach offers over 1600 great restaurants that will please anyone’s appetite. You can eat everything from seafood to sushi with the accompaniment of a fantastic ocean view. Restaurants serve Italian, French, and American family style cuisine. The best in seafood, including the spicy, succulent Calabash variety graces many a buffet.
The area is a welcoming destination for golfers, fishermen, shoppers, families, honeymooners and anyone looking for a relaxed, fun-filled vacation. Myrtle Beach and its neighbor, North Myrtle Beach have something for every budget and itinerary. Their antique stores, great furniture stores and outlets, marinas, fishing, water sports, a Nascar track, and an easy-going family atmosphere make visitors want to return year after year.
The birthplace of the Shag, the official South Carolina State Dance, the Ocean Drive section is the host of two, week long gatherings of shaggers in April and September.. A dance born on the beach, the Shag has been called a cross between the jitterbug and swing dancing.
Myrtle Beach is home to the Pelicans, part of the Atlanta Braves Farm Team System. Many Braves began their careers with the Pelicans. By next year an ice hockey team will be headquartered locally. Myrtle Beach is the golf capital of the country with over 100 top courses on the Grand Strand.
There is also the excitement of Myrtle Beach’s miniature golf courses, theme parks and museums which the whole family will enjoy. Cruise down the beautiful waterway or tour one of the area’s historic plantations. Watch countless species of animals roam in their natural setting along over 500 acres on the Waccamaw River and Intracoastal Waterway.
Visit the world-famous Pavilion and ride every ride or just watch! Myrtle Beach area amusement parks do not impose a “gate fee.” Smell the salt water. Sift your toes into the sand as the surf laps at your ankles. Take a marsh cruise, go deep-sea fishing or windsurf. Fall asleep in the sun. Swim and sail and dine and dance. Experience the ultimate seaside holiday.
Santa Monica Beach symbolizes Southern California Beach lifestyle. Located near the cultural heart of Los Angeles, Santa Monica offers virtually any attraction a visitor could want when visiting southern California. If there is only time to choose one beach in the Los Angeles area during your visit, it should definitely be Santa Monica Beach.
The Santa Monica Pier, located at the end of Colorado Street, is the focal point of the beach area. The wide, sandy beach extends for about a mile north and south of the pier. Pacific Park, an amusement park located on the pier, is anchored by a 9-story solar powered Ferris wheel. Thrill seekers might also enjoy the 5-story roller coaster. Hey, what’s not to like about a beachfront amusement park reminiscent of those that lined the coast in the old days. Romantics and little ones will enjoy the Santa Monica Carousel (as seen in the Hollywood classic The Sting.) Underneath the pier is the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium, a beach level aquarium with exhibits the whole family will enjoy.
By Southern California standards, this is a top-notch beach. The large sandy area between the water and the bicycle path is great for sunbathing, people watching, tossing a ball or simply lying in the soft, warm sand. An offshore breakwater was installed to keep the surf gentle, great for kids but not so good for surfers looking for the best waves. The fun includes swimming, body boarding and just splashing in the water. The kids will enjoy the play area located near the pier. For a little extra exercise while enjoying the sights, running through the beach is a paved bicycle and walking path that extends for miles to the south. No doubt, most people have seen this path: it stars in countless movies and in TV shows such as Three’s Company. Visitors will see a variety of non-motorized transportation on this trail. Bicycle and Rollerblade rental shops are plentiful.
The entire downtown area is great for shopping including the Third Street Promenade, an open-air pedestrian street. The Promenade epitomizes Southern California lifestyle with an eclectic mix of people, shops, restaurants and galleries. Be sure to bring a camera and a pen, as several Hollywood notables have been known to frequent the area.
At the southern end of Santa Monica Beach is the renowned “Muscle Beach”. Remember those “Beach Movies” of bygone days? They featured reels of copper toned hard bodies flexing rippled muscles on the beach. Well, they built those bodies right here at Muscle Beach. Visitors will find an outdoor workout venue with gymnastic and balance equipment and an exhibition area for “flexing”. Muscle Beach has been around since 1930, but was newly restored in 2000.
Santa Monica is privileged to experience ideal weather and climate year round. With the humidity rarely over 55% and a gentle breeze from the nearby Pacific Ocean, the city offers its visitors an ideal climate. Fall and spring usher in many festival and events. Sun, fun, excitement, tranquility, muscles and more! Santa Monica is a vacationer’s paradise.
ONLINE travel agencies have long promoted vacation packages as a means to big savings: “Book Flight + Hotel”
Enlarge This Image More Practical Traveler Columns But many travelers are skeptical, particularly those who learned the hard way that big savings might require tradeoffs like a flight at the crack of dawn, a dingy hotel or multiple flight connections. Now, online travel agencies are hoping to prove those savings exist for a vacation you’d actually want to take.
Travelocity, for instance, is trying to entice customers with a redesigned package search that uses cleaner, bolder navigation, making it easier to shop for alternative flights if the cheapest option isn’t what you want. And last summer Orbitz began listing real-life examples of savings. A recent search for flights from New York to Miami, for instance, brought up a list of package purchases, including: “1 hour ago Alice saved “$373 by booking a flight + this hotel” (South Seas Hotel).
Expedia, believing that the term “package” has a lot to do with customer skepticism, is running a contest on Facebook to rename its bundled vacations. The prize: a trip worth up to $10,000. The problem with the word “package,” said Tim MacDonald, general manager of Expedia.com, is that it sounds inflexible, conjuring up thoughts of a preset, take-it-or-leave-it deal. “You think you basically have to live with whatever they’ve got,” he said, adding that many travelers don’t believe they can get a better deal this way. “But if the hotel doesn’t have to show their price and the airlines don’t have to show their price, both are willing to give lower prices not available otherwise.”
The push to demystify the package comes as airlines and hotels are looking for ways to get consumers to buy directly from their own Web sites through lowest-price guarantees, and changing how and where their rates are listed — as in the case of American Airlines, which is not listed on Expedia or Orbitz. Online agencies are also competing with airlines that are creating their own packages. Just last month, JetBlue began offering a best-price guarantee and additional frequent flier points on packages offered across the airline’s 36 destinations.
So with spring break around the corner, I tested three sites — Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz — by searching for packages for two people for three vacation scenarios — a long weekend in Washington, D.C.; a weeklong getaway to a resort in Cancún; and a week at a luxury resort in Scottsdale, Ariz. — all with nonstop flights leaving the New York area at reasonable times.
For comparison, I shopped for hotels and airfares separately at the suppliers’ own booking sites, then searched across the three online agencies to see if they could beat those rates. I also took a close look at the agencies’ results when searching by price alone. No site consistently offered the best deal, though some were better than others. But the exercise revealed some basic lessons for online shoppers.
DON’T BE SEDUCED BY PRICE ALONE. When filtering results for the cheapest package for the Washington trip, Expedia had the best price, but with drawbacks: $400 for round-trip flights paired with the Garden Inn in Laurel, Md., 22 miles from Washington. Travelocity offered the Travelodge Fredericksburg, about 50 miles south of Washington, for $414. Orbitz had the most viable option: the Courtyard by Marriott Dunn Loring Fairfax in Vienna, Va., a 40-minute Metro ride from Washington, for $527. Still, none of these were what I really wanted — an upscale hotel in the heart of the city.
CHECK OUT THE SITES’ TOP PICKS. Given what I wanted, I was better served by not filtering for price, but instead relying on the default choices listed first (on the Expedia site, these are called Expedia Picks). The options here were more expensive, but also more convenient. Travelocity, for instance, had a good deal on a stay at the upscale Palomar Washington, a Kimpton hotel in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, with nonstop flights on JetBlue, departing New York at 7:30 a.m. and returning at 9:50 a.m. The cost, $711, was a $380 savings off the price I found by checking the hotel and airline sites separately. Orbitz served up essentially the same package as its “best value” with a different JetBlue flight leaving New York in the evening instead of the morning for $72 more than Travelocity. Expedia offered the same flights and a different hotel — Washington Plaza — for $810, with no savings indicated. But even that deal was $281 less than what I was quoted ($1,091) when trying to book the same flights and hotel myself.
CONSIDER PEAK-SEASON PACKAGES. Even in the high season, the agencies’ pre-negotiated rates with airlines and hotels allow them to create packages at prices that you’re unlikely to get from hotels and airlines separately. The best price I found by searching airline and hotel Web sites for a week at the all-inclusive ME Cancún the week before the Easter holiday was $5,297 ($3,102 for the hotel and $2,195 for the flight). All three sites beat that price by at least $1,000, with the best savings from Travelocity, at $3,212 for the same flight and hotel. It still pays to check hotel and airline Web sites directly, as I was reminded when looking for the best price for a peak-season trip to Scottsdale, Ariz. None of the online agencies beat the price I came up with, $3,070, for a week at The Boulders, a Waldorf Astoria Resort, the week leading up to Easter. The closest was Orbitz, which listed the trip for $3,232.
BOTTOM LINE Ultimately Travelocity had the best price for two of my searches: $380 off the Washington trip staying at the Palomar and an impressive $2,085 off the week in Cancún. It also had the cleanest, most intuitive search options with tabs on the left of the packages results, allowing users to select from three options: cheapest package, closest match (for those with specific flight times in mind) and shortest flight. The “change flight” button was another convenience. Travelocity also made it easy to search by hotel amenities like a swimming pool as well as by star rating or hotel name.
Expedia offered the cheapest option when searching by price alone at $400 for the Washington trip, but the hotel was 22 miles from downtown. (The company says it has more than 75,000 hotels available through packages, offering customers a wide choice.) Expedia’s site was also the least appealing. While it did allow searches by hotel amenities, I nearly missed that option, which was in tiny print at the top of the page. Orbitz served up results in a matrix that allowed for an easy at-a-glance view of available deals, but it lost points in my book for neglecting to show the total price upfront, requiring consumers to double the per-person price (shown on the first page) in their head or click on a package to see the total. Users also can’t narrow their search by hotel amenity. My advice: use Travelocity to hunt for packages. It still offers American Airlines in its search, and its site is easy to navigate. Then try to book those directly with the hotels and airlines to see if you can get a better offer.
