Read with interest your trip report for your visit to Vegas - San Francisco -
and New York.

We are planning a trip to vegas 7 nights at the Monte Carlo hotel, and then 4 nights somewhere else. Thinking about San Francisco or Boston or possibly Toronto.

Did you like san francisco and are there good shopping places there, four girls together will not be able to resist a bit of retail therapy.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks
Carole.

Wow, brillant, that is my type of holiday. When the kids are grown up and done for god willing hubby and I can have an adventure like that.

Carole, you'll love the Monte Carlo and Vegas and the shopping!.
We're not great shoppers but know the shopping seems great in SF, particularly round Union Square which is their Oxord Street - there's a Macy's there. We love San Fran - only stayed 2 nights this year as a stop over as we spent time there last year as well. Would recommend it to anyone. It's a good stop over airport as it seems to be on most UK mainstream flight lists. Go with an American airline where you can - we use United - they tend to have better seat/leg room in our experience.

We've not been to Toronto or Boston but they're both on our 'to do' list so you must have good taste!

Waterford, it was a great trip. We've got more adventurous as we (and the kids) have got older. Wish we had the bank balance to match but debt is a wonderful thing isn't it

Howard & Hilda, as Sanji says there are no pockets in shrouds.

Who did you fly with and did you get some free internal flights?

Hi Howard_and_Hilda

We are off to New York in November and I've requested a Big Apple Greeter. How was it? Is it worth doing and did you see the "real" side of NY with them?

Cheers

Hi

Was this trip taken with Virgin? Thinking of doing something similar in 2007 for our honeymoon and was looking through the Virgin brochure.

We flew with United and Ted.Hilda's asleep right now and I don't think we got the free internal flights this year but I'll ask her if we did later. She's the brains behind all our jaunts.
(Hilda says we got 'free' flights Vegas to San Fran and San Fran to New York but as the online system doesn't itemise each flight price it's hard to tell if that's really still the case - or if the add it on in the total - as you just get one total airfare price now - where she used to get individually priced flights in previous years)

Pippanda, I was typically Britishly sceptical about handing over 3 hours of our trip time to a stranger (and nervous of having to be polite and appreciative if I didn't like it!). What a ball we had !!!! Linda, our Greeter walked and talked the legs and ears off us. We loved it. Our Little Hilda (16 and wary when she heard Linda was an ex school Head - as kids do) thought this was the best part of our trip to New York. We just walked and talked our way round 5 points, Chinatown and Little Italy - as that's where we'd asked to go. But in between , Linda took time to show us how to use the subway, walked us into SoHo and took us to the river before taking us back to Times Square via Grand Central Station. We had a ball - but wear your comfiest walking shoes!

ohh glad you all hada brilliant time. We have requested a BAG and hope to get one ok.

Can't wait to go now.

Jaime C

hey glad you had a great time!!! welcome back to reality!

HI Howard and Hilda,
We want to do the trip you have just done next year, only we dont know how to go about booking it can you give us any tips and what time of year would you recommend there's two of us.Big Thanks

Andrew Hilda books all our trips- flights and hotels herself. After some years of researching the net she knows what she wants and where to look for it. Then it's a matter of process of elimination comparing flights and hotels for specific priorities and she books.

I know the first thing is to have a good idea of where you want go, what your budget and priorities are for hotels etc and then start wading through the plethora of information on boards like this and hotel/airline websites.

I'm sure Hilda will give you some pointers tomorrow.

Howard :-)

Howard, have you ever been to these places in America before?

hi, we were thinking of booking the orleans hotel in vegas for part of our hols nxt year as hoping to do vegas ,new york and memphis ,,is this hotel good for kids,,looks ok on internet

Walkers, we loved The Orleans and we'd say kids of all ages will enjoy it.

There are two pools, the larger one was shallow and mainly used by the younger kids and adults just cooling off. Our two are 16 and 18 and felt it wasn't a good pool for swimming but nice for a dip.
There's a multi plex cinema and many lane bowling alley onsite plus two amusement arcades. We felt there was always something for the kids to do rather than leave them in the room if we wanted to go 'to the floor'. There's a good selection of food places including an onsite Subway.

The rooms area good size and had a sofa and proper lounge chair which was luxury to come back to after a day slogging the Strip. There's free internet in the room via ethernet cable provided if you bring your laptop. If not, there's free access via computers in the Business centre downstairs - open 9-5,I think.

The only drawback to Orleans is it's location - possibly 1 1/2 miles off the Strip. But there was a free shuttle bus from 9:30 till 1amish which came about every 30 minutes. The shuttle goes to The Barbary Coast which is mid strip so fine for most visits.It was only once full in our 10 days - but that was due to a traffic delay and they doubled us up with The Gold Coast shuttle and got everyone 'home' on the next bus.

Hope this helps.

Nat , you didn't list any places. We've been to Orlando (of course), Clearwater, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Annaheim, Vegas, Yosemite, Niagra Falls and New York.

Hi, we used a Big Apple Greeter last December. He was brillant in the end he stayed with us for about 7 hours and showed us loads. Well worth it. They do not accept money but we bought Herb our greeter a light lunch next door to Century 21 which is brillant for designer clothing at primark prices

Hi Howard and Hilda

How did you rate the shows Blue Man Group, Mystere and We Will Rock You? We are wondering about seeing BMG when we go back, but I'm not sure if I'd enjoy it.

luci

Can't help you with the BMG at the Luxor, although the hotel itself is great, but we did see We will rock you, at the Paris and it was just fantastic, really rocking. We are a bit biased as we have seen this show in London six times. We are really big fans.

Carole

Luci,

We love BMG - this was our second time. It's a loud show with very visual - some might say almost childish- humour. If you enjoy rock music, the loudness will be fine, if you hate it then it might be too noisy and intrusive for some. Have you seen their Intel adverts? If you like them, you'll probably enjoy the show too.

Mystere? We liked it, but maybe not as much as O and neither are as good as La Nouba in Orlando - but that show's almost perfection and not likely to be beaten. Mystere is more circusey and traditional than O. We particularly enjoyed the acrobats and trampolinists - a 'signature' of Cirque shows.

We Will Rock You was very good. We knew we'd enjoy the music but were sceptical of the play within the show to bring it all together.It was great. Contrived? Maybe. But very slick choreography and scene changes pulled off the transitions and the one liners littered the 90 minutes. We laughed throughout. We'll definitely see this again, but probably next time in London.

Hope this helps.

H&H :-)