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California fly drive advice
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Do you think its worth booking San Diego accomodation in advance? What's the availability and cost of acceptable (well clean and safe!) motels / hotels in places like San Diego, Cambria, Monterey and Temecula?
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Thnaks for the car hire info - must get onto that. Can't say whether you are better booking ahead for San Diego as we were in a timeshare exchange condo for the week we were there.
I have booked 2 hotels for the coastal drive from San Francisco as I'[ve been told the accommodation there gets booked up early, particularly at weekends (my brother drove for hours looking for somewhere- wasted a good half-day).
We are stopping the first night in Monterey at the Comfort Inn Monterey Bay (= $87 including taxes for 2 people B&B, approx £27 each). That;s for April. Booked via www.hotels.com so that if we find a better deal we can cancel without a penalty up until the day before.
Second night is a little family-run hotel opposite the sea at Moonstone Landing just outside Cambria www.moonstonelanding.com This is a bit dearer cos of the location - it's a partial sea view - and also a Fri night ($125 + 13.75 tax = total $138-75, approx £43 each). However, it does include breakfast and afternoon wine and snacks.
Hope that gives you some idea of the price. After looking at the amazing accommodation deals in Las Vegas, these don't seem cheap, but I think it'll be nice to stay somewhere smaller/more personal a couple of nights.
I still have to book a third night. Anyone out there got any idea where would be good to stay en route from Cambria to Las Vegas via Death Valley?0 -
Not sure what you’re like driving over there
Having been to Florida a number of times, found that to be easy on the driving, e.g. easy getting from A to B, also in general driving was easy to manage
however having done a flydrive to L/A then driven to San Francisco
sorry I would not recommend it at all
having stayed in approx. 40 mins from downtown L/A found the driving quite worrying at times due to the way you can leave the "freeway" from any position e.g. inside, outside or middle lane as well as if you take the wrong turning unlike here in Britain you can simply get back on the "motorway"
we stayed for a week in L.A.
then drove about 4-5 hours stayed over somewhere (can't remember the name sorry) for 1 night, then the following day drove on to Sam Franciso, due to all the a) driving done already b) the problems we encounted in the driving
we took our car back early one we arrived in San Franciso
the only place we never visited was Yosemitee Park
If I could offer any advice I would say make sure you get a "comfortable" car, not the basic model, if needs be get an upgrade0 -
I think LA is a particular nightmare - even getting from A to B within LA took hours, it's huge - but we are not going there this time and I'm hoping the rest will be relatively easy (coast, desert, small towns...)0
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Thanks for the San Diego info.
Do you think its worth booking San Diego accomodation in advance? What's the availability and cost of acceptable (well clean and safe!) motels / hotels in places like San Diego, Cambria, Monterey and Temecula?
I'd like to leave a few days a bit flexible (afterall there may be things that my other half wants to do!), but dont want to end up staying in expensive hell holes on my honeymoon....
Well done on the car rental, that seems very reasonable! I should remember the site for my next California rental at Christmas 2010.
Regarding hotels in San Diego it is worth booking in advance using priceline or hotwire. It should be possible for most locations to get a decent 4 star hotel for $100 a night or so. Look at betterbidding.com for assistance on identifying the hotels. If you can ID it, the Sheraton Suites through hotwire or Omni through Priceline are great value hotels and are throughly recommended and both in the downtown.
Downtown/Gaslamp is where the action is, very clean but there can be a vagrancy issue in some streets that a single woman alone might find threatening. Personally, I've never found it to be an issue.
La Jolla is the rich end of the city and also worth a look. It's very laid back and there are some amazing beaches with some amazing shopping at University Towne Centre. Accommodation there is also easy to find on hotwire and priceline.
If you want my honest opinion, I'd spend as little time in LA as you can manage. It's an awful city with awful people, awful traffic and not an awful lot to see. My money would be on more time in San Diego or Las Vegas or places in between.
For hotel/motel chains on the road, my only advice is to ask to see the room first before commiting.0 -
sorry if this has been mentioned but I only read the first page.
If you are renting a car why not do a proper detour to the Grand Canyon and stay at one of the lodges? £400 for the heli ride seems pretty steep and you are subjected to the tour restrictions. If you drive you manage your own time. We did a day bus tour and the 3 hours we spent there were way too little for the grandeur. I wish I had stayed just one hour sitting and "hearing" the silence.
If you need more advice on this a lot of posters at the LV sticky have done this.0 -
I have only read the 1st page and would change your route to something along these lines:
LA (2 nights)
Monterey (1 night)
San Fran (2 nights)
Yosemite (2 nights)
Death Valley (1 night)
Grand Canyon (1 night)
Vegas
Leaving you some spare days to fill in where you want.0 -
one of our favorite meals anywhere, ever was at Croce's in the gaslamp district in San Diego.
http://www.croces.com/croces.shtml
As for the Grand Canyon - I agree that if you have the time to drive and stay overnight, it's a great experience - the nighttime at the Canyon was my favorite part - so many stars - and staying at one of the lodges at the rim really is not that expensive. But I could understand after all that driving you may prefer not to take on a driving trip to the GC.Does remembering a time that a certain degree of personal responsibility was more or less standard means that I am officially old?0 -
truman_sparks wrote: »San fran is nice, 2 full days is prob enough but depends on your flights in and tiredness etc 3 might be better for you, i did a four hour bus tour, showed all the sights from the comfort of a coach and info (stopped alot) my pal took a bike ride accross the gg bridge instead but only saw small part of SF. also book alcatraz well before you go, you cant just turn up! good night out at fishermans wharf, we did evening trip to alc and then FW as next to each other to save time.go to a SF giants game if in town, good atmoss and worth it,
one thing to note is in high season using the trams can be slow as you need to queue and can be their for ages, research to check when your going.
I think LA for atleast one night, maybe stay in the sunset boulevard area so your amongst it then but hollywood/bev hills etc most pople want to see, can then drive down to Santa monica on the pier for dinner, will also be real nice.
TS,
decisions, decisions. lucky you.
You sound very similar to us in your likes/dislikes. I think I too would skip the LA part. We spent a few nights there when we did a fly drive a couple of years ago, nd whilst it was kind of interesting to see all the famous things there, ultimately we just found it loud and busy, and hard work. Neither of us wants to go back and if we could redo the trip, we'd skip LA instead of San Diego.
We also finished in San Diego, it was great to have a few relaxing days after all the driving around being busy doing stuff, and it's a lovely city, nice and relaxing to end your trip.
Regarding your split-city flight, I think the agents called this open-jaw and yes it is harder to get online quotes which was a pain, but most places that you ring will be able to quote you.
Hope you have a great trip - just don't do what we did, and temporarily 'lose' your car in a massive car park. We walked around for over an hour, and just when we thought the car (and all our belongings as we we all packed up between hotels) was stolen, we finally found it !0 -
Would love tips for things to do in San Diego, where to stay, eat, beaches to go to (out of town?) etc. The typical stuff is probably easy to find, but anything slightly off the beaten track or other gems would be great.
The wine region stop sounds good.
When in San Diego, we enjoyed a trip out to La Jolla, I think it was about 15 miles or so north of the city centre.
http://www.lajolla.com/
We had a lovely day wandering around and lots of nice restarants to eat at if you fancied staying into the evening.0 -
Thanks again for the replies.
I had an email from the car rental company saying my requested car isn't available from the 'downtown' location, and I have to either pick another car, or collect it from the airport, which is annoying.
How long will a trip to the airport take and cost from a city centre hotel?0
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