Real Deals

Our editors pick the best travel deals and vacation packages world-wide.

Pacific Coast Highway

Featured Deal

California, Air, Car, 8 Nights, From $839

Explore the Golden State, from its dramatic coastline to the unique character of its three major cities.
Why It's a Deal >>
Show Me >
And Sort By > Most Recent Price Trip Length

You're searching for 'leaving from San Diego, CA '. Displaying 1 – 5 of 6 Real Deals currently available.

Deal Alerts!

Steals and splurges from our partners. (deals will open on the partner's website)

Search All Deals

Follow Us!

Booking Tool

Check Current Prices

  1. Hotels
  2. Flights
  3. Cars
  4. Cruises

Choose Sites

Choose Sites

Choose Sites

Choose Sites

Travel Tips

Tagged
Packing
397299

Before I embark on a trip, I cover the dirt of my potted plants with plastic bags after watering them well. (Cut a few slits in the bags and keep plants out of direct sunlight.) The soil will stay damp for about three weeks.

— Jean Walsh
Tagged
Packing
431287

If the zipper on your luggage or your clothing is giving you any trouble, rubbing some lip balm or candle wax onto the teeth should loosen it.

— Marko Anderson
Tagged
Packing
435313

If you know you'll be cooking while on vacation, bring along small amounts of the spices you need for your favorite recipes. You'll save by not buying large containers of spices.

— Joan Phillips
Tagged
Packing
434322

My husband cut an old contact lens case in two and uses the halves to carry his medication when we're traveling. He prefers them to regular pillboxes because lens cases are watertight and compact enough to carry inside a shirt pocket.

— Jean Holtmann
Tagged
Cruises
420352

If you go directly from the air-conditioned ship out onto the open-air deck (which is usually warmer and more humid in most cruise destinations), your camera's lens is likely to fog up. Warm the camera with your cabin's hairdryer on a low setting or briefly leave it out on your balcony so it can acclimate to the weather.

— Martha and Ken Wiseman
Tagged
Planning
598663

Before leaving on a trip, I print the names and addresses of my friends and family onto clear mailing labels. (All standard word-processing programs have preset templates for creating address labels.) Then, I take the address-label sheets with me on vacation. Since the addresses are already saved in my computer and the mailing labels are adhesive, addressing postcards has become really easy.

— Lisa Higgins
Tagged
Packing
415305

Pack a glue stick for journaling. Rather than bringing home an envelope full of ticket stubs and mementos, you can glue them into your journal as you're traveling. You'll have a better chance of remembering what the ticket was for if you label it right away.

— Jon Chun
Tagged
Car Rentals
414282

You won't always save by bringing the rental car back early. Alamo has an early-return policy at all of its locations, designed to discourage customers from returning cars early. If you show up at the lot a day or two ahead of schedule, Alamo will recalculate what you owe them at the daily rate; if it turns out to be less than what you would have paid for the week, they'll charge a $15 fee. Yet another reason to read the fine print on your contract carefully!

— Beth Ann Finster
Tagged
Packing
403311

Bungee cords make versatile travel accessories. They come in handy at the airport for lashing a duffel bag to a wheeled suitcase. They can be hooked together and used as a clothesline for swimsuits, towels, etc. On skiing trips, hook them onto ski boots to create carrying handles. While camping, use them to secure tarps, to suspend a lantern from a nearby tree limb, or to secure items in a canoe. They even hold your pants up if you misplace your belt.

— Keith Saul
Tagged
Packing
412296

Paper place mats can be useful anywhere there's an outdoor shower. By stepping onto a place mat after a bush shower in Botswana, I managed to keep my feet clean and avoided getting dirt in my clothes.

— Sandy S. Hogan
Tagged
Hotels
502377

The help of a concierge at an expensive hotel is available even if you're staying at a motel across the street. Go to the concierge with $5 (or whatever the assistance is worth to you) held discreetly but visibly in your hand. Chances are you won't be asked whether you're staying at the hotel. This worked for us once when we were stranded by a blizzard. We tried to rebook our flights on our own, but phones at the airlines were busy for two days straight. The concierge at a fancy hotel a few blocks away got through on his first try and managed to rearrange our flights for us.

— Janet Willer
Tagged
Safety
477356

I agree that the anti-seasickness medication for cruises, Bonine, is excellent and effective; but there is a budget way to buy it. The primary ingredient in Bonine is meclizine (25 mg). While a package of eight Bonine tablets costs just over $4 at a drugstore, you can buy a bottle of 100 generic meclizine (25 mg) for about the same price. This is an over-the-counter (no prescription needed) item, but you usually have to ask for it at the pharmacy counter.

— Lila Held
Tagged
Family Travel
587675

At a theme park, tie a brightly colored scarf to the handle of your stroller before you enter a ride. When you return, you'll be able to quickly pick out your stroller from a sea of look-alikes.

— Katrina Shelton
Tagged
Technology
449295

Before my last long flight, I went to librivox.org and chose a bunch of books, short stories, and poems to download to my iPod--for free. The site has both adult and children's books, and the list is growing. All of the titles are in the public domain, and they're read by volunteers, so there's no question of copyright infringement. Even if you don't own an iPod, you can download them to your computer and burn them onto a CD.

— Diane Bowman
Tagged
Family Travel
423295

Want to visit museums with your children without the boredom and tears? Go to the gift shop first and buy postcards of the museum's most famous works. Have your kids treasure hunt for these masterpieces. When you get home the postcards can go right into your trip album.

— Daphna Woolfe
Tagged
Hotels
468384

If you're traveling solo and your room has a double bed, sleep on the side farthest from the phone. It's slept on less frequently and is therefore more comfortable.

— Ruth Schnur
Tagged
Air Travel
427306

We've noticed that when booking a flight for our family under one reservation, some airlines will only credit the 1,500 bonus miles (500 for booking online, 500 each way for printing boarding passes) to the person whose name the reservation is under. This is regardless of whether the other family members have mileage accounts. To avoid this, make a separate reservation for each of your family members and then pick seats together.

— Martin Vasquez
Tagged
Air Travel
431302

Before you head to the airport, make a list of all the items in your checked luggage that would be prohibited in your carry-on. If an item (such as a knife for a picnic) makes its way into your purse or daypack during your travels, it should be accounted for when repacking and put into the checked piece to avoid hassles at airport security.

— Nina Gormley
Tagged
Packing
427320

Instead of bringing one of those bungee cables to hang-dry my delicates and socks, I pack a couple of mini plastic hangers--the ones that bras and panties come on when you buy them. They take up very little room in my luggage and can be thrown away at the end of the trip.

— Monica Pileggi
Tagged
Packing
429290

Instead of packing a complete shaving kit, my husband fills his wide-mouth Nalgene water bottle with items such as razors, spare contact lenses, eyeglasses, toothbrush, and so on. This turned out to be particularly useful on our trip to Costa Rica, where we also took the bottle on our day hikes to volcanoes and the jungle.

— Terry Clemson
Tagged
Packing
437304

Save the flip-flops you're given at the nail salon after a pedicure. They make great shower shoes. They're lightweight and dry quickly, and you can throw them away at the end of your trip.

— Carmen Shirkey
Tagged
Cruises
505707

For fire-safety reasons, cabins don't have their own irons. Don't wait until the last minute to tackle your evening wardrobe. You can find shared irons down the hall in the laundry room, but lines often form before mealtimes. Opt for off-hours (like mornings).

— Martha and Ken Wiseman
Tagged
Technology
436300

When my husband and I travel with our children, our luggage is weighed down by diapers, formula, and other necessities. To save space and hassle, we now ship ahead most of those items to our hotel. We also came across a Web site called babiestravellite.com, where we can order supplies and have them shipped anywhere in the world.

— Mina Camera
Tagged
Technology
462310

We always e-mail our itinerary--including flights, hotels, and confirmation numbers--to ourselves and to family members. If our luggage is lost or our wallets are stolen, all of this essential information is just an Internet café and a few quick clicks away.

— Courtney Fuller
Tagged
Packing
433259

During a visit to Mexico City, I was sitting in a plaza near a fountain, watching the locals stroll around in their Sunday best. Nearby, an older gentleman was playing a concertina; his music perfectly framed the scene. I took lots of pictures, but I didn't have a way to capture that music. Now I pack a small tape recorder along with my camera.

— Kieran Sala
Tagged
Hotels
478397

Finding the bathroom in the middle of the night in a strange hotel room or cruise-ship cabin can be a challenge. Leaving the bathroom light on seems wasteful and makes the room too bright for sleeping. My husband and I used to travel with a night-light, but we couldn't always find a convenient place to plug it in. We've recently discovered a better solution: plastic light sticks. They come in several glow-in-the- dark colors and are activated by bending the tube into a circle and connecting the ends. Each evening, we hook one of the loops over the bathroom-door handle, where it provides a gentle glow through the night.

— Carol Attar
Tagged
Technology
458297

Tell me I'm not alone: Almost every time I park my car at the airport, I have trouble finding it when I return. (I even reported my car stolen once after searching for hours, only to discover I was in the wrong lot!) I now use my cell phone to leave myself a message as to where I've parked my car.

— Perry Babel
Tagged
Hotels
479369

Flight attendants often work vampire hours and have to sleep during the day. How do we keep the sunlight from leaking into our hotel rooms? We clip a skirt hanger (or two) to the middle of the drapes to seal them together.

— Elisabeth Joyce
Tagged
Packing
417280

A beach ball can replace many expensive in-flight gadgets. Depending on how much you inflate it, the ball can function as a very comfortable footrest, a back support, or a lap pillow to support your book.

— Dorothy Vincent
Tagged
Family Travel
434275

When my husband and I would stay in a hotel with our two-year-old, a full night's sleep was out of the question. The minute our son opened his eyes (at 2,3,or 4 a.m.), he woke us, thinking it was time to play. We now pack a pop-up tent and set it up in a corner of the hotel room with books, a blanket, and a few small stuffed animals. The tent folds down to a 14-inch circle and weighs about a pound. It works great! My son has his own "room" to sleep in when we vacation, and we all get to sleep through the night!

— Geri Kronyak

Custom Search

Select the details relevant to your trip to see a list of articles that match your needs — it's the best way to get ideas!
SELECT YOUR DESTINATION
SELECT YOUR ACTIVITIES