Travel Planning

Travel planning is hard work. I think we're finished with organizing our family trip to China later this month. I've sent out a lot of emails and browsed a lot websites and we're still relying on travel agencies for some of the trip. Some of the extra work is because I'm cheap so we were dealing with travel agencies in China. I think we discovered that with agencies that mainly deal with locals, even their first class tours are pretty cheap, both quality and price. I guess that's fair... if you want First World accommodations, prices don't vary that much across the world.

Anyway, I think I still need to buy plane tickets for my parents from Beijing to Chengdu, then book another night of hotel for them as well. My friend was going to meet me in Beijing from Chengdu but she booked a later flight than all of us due to discounts so now I have to figure out arrival details for Beijing again.

The TV show Amazing Race had graphics showing different team's travel plans with moving arrows on an animated globe/map. I wonder what software they used to create it. It would be cool to do that for our trip; there are currently 24 trip segments to worry about for all six of us.