Hotels and Reservations

All of the reservations for the trip are now complete. Have overnight at the Red Lion at the Seattle/Tacoma airport. I used PriceLine to bid on the room but according to what I've read I paid too much even though is was less that half of what the site was selling rooms for there on a regular basis. Oh well, next time I will bid lower. They do have a shuttle to and from the airport on a 24 hour basis so we won't have transportation worries in Washington. Will be staying at a Comfort Inn when we return to Heathrow from Egypt on March 23rd. The rate for the room was cheaper directly from the hotel than the home website for Comfort Inns and Suites and it was also cheaper than on the big hotel booking websites. Bidding for that night wasn't an option as PriceLine is only good for the US.

We still need to contact the credit card companies and the credit union to let them know that we will be travelling so they don't block the accounts on us. That would really be a nasty thing to happen. Last week we did request a credit increase on one of our cards so we would have a margin of safety in case one gets stolen or some such thing as that.

We bought some new luggage on Monday as well. We got a three piece set that includes a bigger roller than we have and a small one that we will be able to use as a carry-on and not have to worry about carrying it around during some of our generally long layovers. If the set would have included two of those smaller bags I would have really liked that. Alaska Airlines says they will honor American's luggage policy for overseas so will have to get in touch with American to have them put the luggage limitations in our record so Alaska can see them and not hassle us when we board next week. We will probably have to retrieve our bags in Seattle and check them again on American since we are staying overnight.

I guess overall for this trip we have done our homework pretty well. I talked with a travel agent the other day and she could not believe how cheaply we were going to Egypt with a stop over in London. At least that made me feel pleased about all of the work I have put into this.

Hotel in Seattle

We still need to get a hotel in Seattle (SeaTac actually) for our overnight there on the 5th. Have been exploring using price line to bid on a room instead of paying the "going" rate. I listen to the Clark Howard show on KFQD sometimes and he suggested one should go to a web site called Bid on Travel to learn how to use sites like Priceline and HotWire to bid for travel instead of paying the prices listed. The research here again is cumbersome. There are pages and pages to go through if you are goint to do it "correctly" and get the cheapest available rates. I will probably give it a try this weekend when I have some more time to spare and again will post the results when and if they happen. Hopefully we will actually be able to save some money and learn how to use it for future trips. There are still so many things to do before we leave it just seems overwhelming at times.

London stuff

I contacted the Elizabeth Hotel about checking in at 6:30 AM. They say, "No problem as long as you pay for the room for the night before". We are going to pass on that. They will be happy to help us with theater tickets though. We are in the process of trying to decide what show(s) to go see while were are there. We also checked with them on tube passes for the 3 days we will be in London and we were told that the passes were only available at Victoria Station. Guess we will have to make our way to that station shortly after we arrive in London.

Will send off another email to them when we decide on shows and to get directions for riding the tube to the hotel from the airport. Hopefully they will be able to help us with other touristy stuff as well.

We have an itinerary for our time in Egypt and will be posting that shortly, maybe even this evening.