Vacations Blog

My husband and I both enjoy wine, and before the kids came along, we used to spend many a relaxing afternoon at wineries in the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains, picnicking and sipping classy California wines. Along came the kids, and somehow this did not seem practical anymore. We had new afternoon plans, which mostly involved naps, scheduled feedings and lots of play time. Wine tasting seemed like it had gone the way of our golf games….

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With three locations in Texas, Schlitterbahn is definitely a “must visit” for you and your family, you and your significant other, you and your friends, or even by yourself! Whatever your group consists of these water parks will prove a fun time for all. Locations include New Braunfels, Galveston, and South Padre Island. I’ve been to all three parks and had a wonderful time in each but my personal favorite is New Braunfels. The main reason for this is that Galveston and Padre are both beach/ocean locations and offer their own variety of water fun. Put that aside and the fact is that I have never had anything less than a blast in New Braunfels and three generations of my family agree wholeheartedly!

The New Braunfels location boasts a family-friendly park that offers free parking, tubes, lifejackets, and also allows you to bring your own picnic. In addition, Schlitterbahn Waterpark Resort in New Braunfels has over 3 miles of tubing adventures, 7 children’s water playgrounds, 17 water slides, the world’s first surfing machine, and 3 uphill water coasters spread over 65 acres of fun!

But that’s not all, for New Braunfels is an excellent vacation spot all on its own. There is easy access to both Austin and San Antonio for those of you more “city oriented” but I think you’ll find it hard to leave New Braunfels behind. In addition to Schlitterbahn you will find beautiful golf courses, easy access to the Natural Bridge Caverns and Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, horseback riding, amusement centers, vineyards, and so much more. The McKenna Children’s Museum is also a great place to see. But above all you should definitely consider doing some tubing down the Guadalupe River – you’ll be hooked!

I’ve been to New Braunfels with friends and in the past few years with family (toting a toddler) and we never grow tired of the place! If you have a favorite Schlitterbahn or New Braunfels story/place to share, please pass it along. I’ll be visiting there again early this summer!

Until next time . . .

Paige aka PJsTravelinTexas

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Take off. Take a vacation. Take a break. Take flight. Get up and go.

These are a few well known phrases that we use in our daily lives when we talk about travel. We all want to “take” a break from the routine or simply get “up”, go and leave it all behind. To us, these two words–”up” and “take”–get across the idea of action, discovery and potential that comes along with planning travel.

We decided to change our name from Kango to UpTake.

We loved the name Kango for the positive energy it conveyed. However there were several other brands that had similar names Kaango Classifieds , Kangoo Shoes, Kangol Hats, Kango Wines, Kango Jack-Hammers and we felt this was just too confusing.

Also, we also wanted something that tied more directly to what we do. “Uptake,” as a common word, means quick understanding and comprehension; and gathering up of key facts. We want our new brand UpTake to convey our ability to gather, organize and deliver the web’s collective travel wisdom to help you make trip planning faster. That’s what resonated the most with private beta users, press and bloggers with the Kango.com private beta launch.

What’s going to happen to Kango.com?

Kango.com will still be available and identical to UpTake.com for some time. You may be redirected to one domain or the other during our transition period as we migrate content/databases etc. Don’t worry though, the site content will be the same, and your experience will be the same regardless of the domain name! (If you happen to be Googlebot or the Yahoo! Slurp crawler, our robots.txt on each site will aim to ensure that you don’t run into duplicate content.)

There is an explosion of user generated travel content on the Web, which is screaming out to be gathered up, organized, and made searchable so people can use it to plan better trips. I’m excited about the new name because this is exactly what UpTake is all about! Come visit us at http://www.uptake.com. Please start coming to UpTake and tell us what you think about our new brand! Our hope for you: that you get a great take on your next trip with UpTake.

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From guest blogger Marsha Takeda-Morrison of Sweatpantsmom

I’m familiar with the reactions: the sad eyes, the whining, the frantic efforts to hide in the laundry room. No, I’m not talking about your cat when faced with a vet visit, but your children when you mention that you’ll be taking them to ‘somewhere educational.’

Sure, you’ll get more cheers for Chuck E. Cheese’s, but sometimes it’s nice to take the kids somewhere that teaches them more than how quickly a roll of quarters can disappear when you’re mesmerized by a large waltzing mouse. Here are some of my favorite ‘smart’ destinations in Los Angeles. I’ll bet they’ll forget all about that dancing rodent.

We just went to the newly revamped Griffith Observatory and can’t wait to go back. It had been closed for almost five years for renovations, and was well worth the wait. The new Planetarium Show is amazing and had our kids captivated – you would have thought it was a SpongeBob marathon. The displays are beautiful – a large room with huge planet models overhead and a screen showing a live feed from the space station was my favorite. I have to mention their amazing Café at the End of the Universe – my husband pointed out that I saved my most enthusiastic response for the snack-break portion of our visit. But the Peets coffee, croissants and a killer view made me as happy as seeing a ten-foot glowing model of Mars.

One of my favorite locations is also one of the oldest: The Museum of Natural History in Exposition Park that opened its doors in 1913. I’ve been going there since I was a child, and have been taking my kids there since they were toddlers. Sometimes we take a break from wandering around the animal dioramas, grab a snack and wander the famous Rose Garden for awhile. Next door is the amazing California Science Center, which has free admission and is home to the popular BodyWorks exhibit centered around Tess, a fifty-foot body simulator. Oh, and there’s a McDonalds downstairs, in case the whining starts up and needs to be quieted by a bag of french fries.

Then there’s the KidSpace Museum in Pasadena, which is popular with younger children. I took my 9 and 11-year-olds there recently and found that they had outgrown most of it, although they did still enjoy the regularly scheduled nature shows and hiking around the outdoor gardens. The little ones will love the whimsical hands-on exhibits.

Last but not least I have to mention the beach. Because there’s not one single location in the city that I feel has taught my kids as much. They’ve learned about marine life, birds and the properties of water. It’s led to discussions about homelessness and compassion when we’ve given money to a man asking for help, and the meaning of war when we came upon a memorial to fallen soldiers erected in the sand in Santa Monica. With nothing to distract us we’ve sat on our towels and talked about everything from school bullies to Michelangelo to why we love Jack Black. And the best part? The kids had no idea they’d been ‘learning’ all day long.

What are your favorite ‘smart’ destinations in your city?

[photo: GriffithObservatory.org]

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Since our launch in December, we have had thousands of people request a private beta invitation to visit our site. We appreciate everyone’s participation, comments and reviews. It has helped direct our development, given us new ideas and provided encouragement in the midnight hours. Here is a review of blog post coverage we received recently:

Rob Lovitt, at MSNBC in his Online Comparison Sites Move Beyond Price asks you to, “consider the newest kid on the meta-search block, Kango.com, which should probably be called a meta-research site. Currently in private beta, it’s being built on the proposition that finding the right trip is as important as finding the lowest price.” We think Rob has described us well with his newly coined term, “meta-research.”

Jeremy Liew at Lightspeed Venture Partners wrote about the Semantic Web in Travel. He agreed with our approach to the semantic web. He stated, “I am a believer in approaching the semantic web top down rather than bottom up, i.e. by inferring structure from domain knowledge rather than requiring all websites to mark up their content in RDF.” He subsequently pointed to the only two firms in travel taking this approach, TripIt and Kango.

EyeForTravel.com commented that Kango “aggregates and organizes the myriad of the Internet’s travel community and review sites into one place.”

SmartBlog described us as “a resource that brings all your choices to ONE place, filters them based on your preferences, and helps you make a faster, better decision based on more than 20M opinions from 1,000+ web sites.”

I have recapped a list of all the blogs and analyst coverage for quick review right here. If you would like to see more discussion on this coverage, go here and here.

December, 2007–Private Beta Coverage

• Dan Kaplan at VentureBeat
• Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch
• Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim.
• Rafe Needleman of Webware (CNET)
• Anne Zelenka from GigaOm

January, 2008– Analyst and Blog Feedback From Kango’s Private Beta,

• Diane from Jupiter Research
• Tim from Business of Online Travel
• Claude from Les Explorers
• Blog Search Engine
• HotelMarketing.com
• Jens from Tourism Internet Marketing

We hope some of this coverage piqued your interest and you too will join our private beta and the conversations about Kango. Invitations are still sent out periodically to coincide with new features on our site. As HotelMarketing said, visit Kango to discover “a more satisfying vacation experience”.

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Since March is National Women’s History Month, I thought I would throw a little trivia into this week’s travel blog. Today we’re going to talk about the cozy little ocean-front city of Corpus Christi, which gave birth to a woman whose invention is still in use today.

Anyone who has ever used a typewriter knows and loves this Texas lady’s brainstorm – Liquid Paper. I’m talking about Bette Nesmith Graham, (23 March 1924 - 12 May 1980) who was born Bette Clair McMurray in Corpus Christi, Texas. In 1946 she found herself a divorced, single mother and to support herself she went to work as a bank secretary. Eventually she rose to the position of executive secretary, the highest position available to women in that industry at the time. In order to make extra money, Bette had a side job painting holiday windows. She combined these two talents to create her product, which she originally called “Mistake Out” in 1956 and created her own company. In 1979 she sold Liquid Paper to the Gillette Corporation for a whopping US $47.5 million. Sadly she died a year later at the young age of 56.

To celebrate this feisty Texas entrepreneur, why not take a trip to Corpus Christi? You can visit the Texas State Aquarium, transport yourself back in time on the USS LEXINGTON, or just relax and unwind in the Corpus Christi Bay area on the beach. While you’re there, take a moment to think about and thank Bette for her courage, foresight, and indomitable Texas spirit.

Until next time . . .

Paige aka PJsTravelinTexas

For more to do in Corpus Christi, see these blogs:

1. Corpus Christi Travel Guide by Virtual Tourist
2. The 10 Best Things To Do In Corpus Christi by 10 Best
3. Corpus Christi Vacation Deals by Trip Advisor

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Every now and then women just need to get away from everything, and there is no finer medicine than a trip to South Padre Island. Even though this island is only a few miles wide, it is packed with beautiful beaches, every kind of water sport you can imagine, shopping, restaurants, and charters.

Before you go, it’s a good idea to do a bit of research. First of all you’ll need a place to stay! I recommend Suntide III Condominiums but for a full listing of what is available you can check Trip Advisor, just put in South Padre Island and you’ll have a multitude of choices.

What you do next depends on how you like to travel, whether you like to have everything planned and plotted out in advance or kind of just fly by the seat of your pants and leave it all to chance. Personally I do a bit of both, I do just enough research ahead of time to have an idea of what there is to do but I don’t set specific times or goals or plan an itinerary.

South Padre offers something for whatever mood you’re in, whether it’s lying on the beach sunning, sitting in the shade watching the ocean, learning to surf or snorkel, or chartering a boat for some deep sea fishing. That last one sounded kind of “manly”, didn’t it? You’d be surprised how much fun it is to go fishing – you never have any idea what you will catch. It could be a puffer fish, a shark, a swordfish, you just never know. And you haven’t lived until you’ve tried surfing! We used South Padre Surf Company and it was worth every penny – they are just great. However there are a ton of companies to choose from and you can find them as well as other activities and events at the South Padre Parade website.

I also recommend taking the time to read some warnings from those who have visited the area before; there are some very helpful tips at the Virtual Tourist site.

You really can’t go wrong by taking a trip to South Padre Island, even in the winter it is a beautiful area and the temperatures are mild enough to make it enjoyable. Do you have any tips or recommendations for someone wanting to visit South Padre?

Until next time . . .

Paige aka PJsTravelinTexas

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One of my neighbors, is planning a trip to Southern California. She asked me, neighborhood travel guru, how she could find a hotel that would accommodate her rambunctious family. I asked her what amenities she thought a family oriented hotel must have and she and I quickly listed some basics. I was curious if we could find hotels that met her requirements and if we were missing some important criteria. First the list:

Minimum Requirements

Free breakfast
Swimming pool
Two rooms
Clean
Central to many activities
A lifeguard at the pool would be a bonus
Babysitting services
Television with children’s movies on demand
Room service
Good value

Then some research…After digging a bit , I added a few more suggestions (for those of you with the need to heat the baby’s bottle or the need to amuse teenagers.)

Cribs
Microwave
Kitchen (We intentionally left this off ‘cuz we don’t want to cook on vacation. Reluctantly, I put it back on. ..)
Refrigerator
Game room
Ice skating rink
Movie theater

I started my research on family friendly hotels in California on Kango. I know the site and the state. I looked at a few other sites and it seems moms and dads all over the country are looking for the same things with a few twists. Best of all, you can find hotels that meet the minimum criteria easily.

First, I checked San Francisco family hotels, because I know the city and wanted to see if I agreed with the results I found. Kango suggested the Radisson Hotel in San Francisco because they have cribs (not on our original list, because my friend and I are past this part of child rearing) are located in Fisherman’s Wharf and offer easy access to all the tourist destinations. It is a solid recommendation, except I wouldn’t want to stay at the wharf for more than a couple nights. Has a bit of a “carnie” atmosphere.

Next I checked out family hotels in that most Disney of towns, Anaheim. She is going to Disneyland first.I think it has to be the Disneyland Hotel due to the park access. Although the Candy Cane Inn has a great name and appears family friendly.

My friend checked out San Diego, she started on TripAdvisor, and then compared it to Kango. We both decided we would stay at the Dana on Mission Bay, it has views of the SeaWorld fireworks, bike rentals and all of her amenities and then some. Los Angeles, was next, because it is near Anaheim and she can spend a night or two there on her drive home. I love Venice and Manhattan Beach and thought I could find a hotel matching her desire to ride the strand and check out Universal Studios. Didn’t find much, the two points are too far away from each other. SoCal seems covered.

Next, I wanted to see what the sites had to suggest around a ski vacation. Next weekend, we are going to South Lake Tahoe, the Marriott Timber Lodge wins, they have a movie theater, ice rink and a gondola onto Heavenly. Now, those are upgrades. I love ski in and ski out hotels.

I decided to research a few spots that are less family oriented than Anaheim or San Diego to see if I could glean any other additions. Palm Springs, seems to have many hotels with great pools, but quite a few mentioned a family oriented atmosphere that I didn’t find in the other bigger cities’ hotel reviews. I originally thought Palm Springs was for golfers, I guess it is also for families seeking some really hot weather. I chose the Coyote Inn, good reviews and love that name. Because of this little gem’s reviews, I am adding kitchen and microwave to my list. I forgot about the need to warm milk quickly for young kids and realize some of you want to cook on vacation (crazy!). San Jose, a place I consider ideal for start-up businesses, not start-up families had the standard offerings. One hotel offered a game room…not a bad idea. Onto the list it goes for teenagers. Santa Barbara is a place designed for the wealthy retired folk and college kids, but like Palm Springs had number of hotel reviews that make you feel like a member of a really nice family. Plus, the prices were surprisingly reasonable. She may stop there, but probably doesn’t have time.

Finally, I checked out the seaside town of Monterey. We are going again in June and I just wanted to see what the sites had to say about the Mission Ranch Resort. Looks like a perfect choice. A few reviews also mentioned pet-friendly as part of a family vacation. I see that as an entirely new set of criteria. Good news, is that family friendly hotels can be found all over California at all prices. Pack up the kids and go. No excuses.

So do you agree with my list? Do you have an amenity I forgot to add?

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