I will share with you the very best internet resources to help you plan your dream getaway.
You can spend the next 100 years chasing Hawaii links on the internet. There are many good sites, but you can spend so much time tracking them that you never make it to the island. I want to point out just a handful that I find very useful. It is possible to plan your trip with the use of these sites. You may need to branch out a little further but not much. You don’t need a list of all the good ones. You need just the few best ones. These are the ones I find most useful:
tripadvisor.com – Because this site is visited by so many people, you can get a wide variety of opinions and reasons why something specific is good or bad. I used to go to expedia.com and travelocity.com for my ratings. I like Trip Advisor more because it covers places to eat, places to stay, and things to do. Those others just cover ratings for places that will take your money. There are plenty of free places worth visiting that you can read about at tripadvisor.com . While this is a good starting point, it should not be your only source as it is tainted with false reviews as much as the next internet site.
www.vrbo.com – The acronym VRBO stands for “Vacation Rentals by Owner.” This is the site to go to if you need to investigate your home or condo rental options. Once at the site, type “Kauai condo” or “Kauai home” into the search box. At each site, you can check the calendar for availability and prices. There are plenty of pictures and reviews to help you size up each.
www.yelp.com – Once you have decided at which restaurant you wish to dine, you can pop over to yelp and read some of the reviews from past patrons. The good thing about this site is that the food reviews tend to be longer and more detailed than just “it’s good.” The bad news is that yelp has a reputation for drawing in those types that like to vent and may leave an overly negative review.
www.FlyerTalk.com – This is mainly a website for those frequent flyers. Even if that doesn’t interest you, this can be a very valuable site because it holds the collective knowledge of world travelers and I am constantly surprised at all the nuggets of wisdom I can pick up at that site. Even, if you aren’t interested in collecting or cashing in frequent flyer miles, go to the site, click on forums and then destinations. From there, scroll down to the “America – USA” section and you should be able to enter the “Hawaii” forum.
Answers.yahoo.com – If after all your research, you still have a burning question that remains unanswered, go to Yahoo answers and post your question. Unfortunately, there is no Kauai category for your question. Your best bet is to choose travel->United States->Honolulu. That category seems to be monitored by many helpful travel agents who are willing to answer your question and plug their business. And I assure you that no question is too silly. I have seen some crazy questions there including “On what side of the island is the sunset during the month of January?”
