Travel agent

This past weekend, after the fun-filled activities were over and our out of town friends had left to go home, Steve and I decided to head over to the travel agency at our local mall to ask a few questions. I mean...it's never too early to start planning a vacation right?

We got there and it was surprisingly busy. We waited about 15 minutes before anyone could see us. We went into it knowing what exactly we were looking for. We know we want to go to Tahiti, and then island hop to Bora Bora, Moorea and then Manihi as our last stop.

We know we want to stay in the overwater bungalows at each of our stops. A lot of the resorts have regular rooms that are on the island, but Steve and I want to make sure we get to stay in one of those special huts (we have to book early to guarantee an overwater bungalow since there are so few of them). And not only do we have to specify that we want to stay in one of the huts, but we have to specify that we want all the amenities - I don't anticipate spending a ton of time in our room, but c'mon, we all know Steve and I. TV junkies. We need TV at night before going to bed. Having AC is important to us as well - it'll be an average of 85 degrees (the water temp is like 75 degrees!) so I know we'll get a little too warm if we didn't have AC.

While we were there, the lady we were talking with told us that she's really not the one we want to be speaking with. She's the Mexico expert, while her counterpart who was busy at the time, is a Tahiti expert. She's passing all our information to her and we're hoping to hear back from her sometime this week. Anyways, she pulled up some flight information, just to see where we'd be dollars wise and as it turns out, it's much cheaper than what I had found online! She pulled up information for this May too, so by booking early for next May, we should get even a better deal. It was about $500 less PER plane ticket! There are a few options too, we can get a direct flight out of JFK, which would be ideal - we can get tickets to NYC for pretty cheap around here. And a direct flight?! Awesome. The other option is to fly out of LAX. My mom has already said that we can use her mileage to get out there for free...but if we can manage it, we're hoping to book the direct flight from JFK.

We can't technically book anything until July of this year, but it's coming soon! We will be so excited to book something! What's nice about working with a travel agency is that even if we book super early, they always keep an eye ot for specials and discounts and we can get them applied to our trip. So we know we won't be paying MORE for anything...Another really cool thing is that instead of purchasing stuff from our bridal registry, people can call the travel agency and help pay for our trip! Steve and I have so much stuff already and have been living together for so long that we really don't need any household items. This is sweet.

Not only that, but the agency can pre plan and pre book our activities while we're there. We will seriously show up with our itinerary in hand and have everything already planned for us. Awesome. We won't need to worry about this, or that, or planning something last minute.

Annnnd. To book the entire trip? We just need to pay for our flights and a $150 deposit. The remaining amount is due 35 days from when we leave. We can drop in and pay off our balance whenever. This will be a HUGE help - we won't have to cough up ALL the money right away, but we can chip away at the balance as we go. Sweet!

I don' t know why I've never thought about a travel agency.