There are thousands of websites where you can research trip ideas (Spot Cool Stuff’s own travel blog not least among them) and hundreds of websites where you make your trip reservations—from general booking engines like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz to niche sites like Cruise Direct, Mr & Mrs Smith and HostelBookers, to a site like Tripology that will hook you up with a travel specialist for free.
But what after your accommodations are booked, after your travel guidebook is bought, after your general itinerary is set and after you’ve left for your trip? What are some useful sites for while you are traveling?
Here is a selection of our favorites for doing the following from the road:
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Pets can make absolutely wonderful travel companions. The process of finding pet-friendly accommodations, however, can be a less-than-wonderful experience. Fortunately there are several websites that specialize in helping your little Rover or Fluffy enjoy your vacation along with you.
Reviews of our three favorite:
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We absolutely love maps. We have since we were six years old when we traced out a giant map of the world and then painstakingly demarcated the territories that would be controlled by each of our stuffed animals.
In the hope that some of our readers enjoy maps as much as we do we present one of our favorite blogs: Strange Maps.
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Time was that a person on a vacation would send friends and family these things called “postcards.” A “postal service” would physically carry said card from the sender’s location to the addressee’s provided that the postcard had affixed upon it a proof of delivery service payment (or “stamp”). One side of the postcard would have a short message, the other side a photo of people the sender has never met or a vista the sender has probably not seen.
Today, people travel with digital cameras and email photos of their trip to their friends and family. This method is a lot faster. But something has been lost in not getting that physical postcard.
Into the mix comes Hazelmail.
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Almost everywhere it is expensive to fuel your car. If you live in the United States and Canada, at least, there’s a website that will help you find the cheapest price. Type your address into GasBuddy.com and you’ll get a list of the cheapest gas in your ‘hood. Or, look at the handy overview map for a breakdown of what regions generally have the cheapest fuel.
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Note: There’s also a similar website for the UK: Petrol Prices
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If you are looking to take an epic trip what better place to get inspiration than the epic trips of the past? A flash-rich feature produced by Good Magazine has mapped out the routes of 21 historic trips, both real (eg. the trans-Siberian railroad) and fictitious (eg. a journey to the center of the earth). To varying degrees you can learn more about each route in photos and text — Jack Kerouac’s road trip is brought to life with several quotes by the author but somehow the multi-faceted Silk Road gets only two photos (?). This fun feature should appeal to anyone who’s a traveler at heart.
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There are dozens of flight tracking sites out there that can tell you if your flight is on time (or, rather, how late it is). King of them all is fboweb. They get their flight data directly from air traffic control so their information is more current and accurate than even the airlines can provide. Plus, their site includes a ton of features such as the opportunity to listen to live feeds from air traffic control and recent past flights your aircraft has taken. The coolest of all: Your flight’s data syncs up Google Earth, letting you look at a 3D rendering of exactly where on the planet your aircraft is.
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Find a pub, hotel, cinema, restaurant, bed & breakfast or meeting room exactly half way between two addresses.
You live in London, your significant other lives in Manchester and you want to have a little tryst in a hotel that’s exactly half way between you two. Type each of your addresses into Meethalfway.com and — voila — up comes your answer: the Woodside Hotel, exactly a 1 hour 45 minute drive from each of you. At the time of writing only those living in Britain can ensure that their meetings take place in a perfectly equitable location though Meet Half Way is launching versions for the United States and Europe shortly.
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