Kwik-E-Mart site added.

I've added the New York Kwik-E-Mart to our sites to see map. This is part of the Simpsons Movie (IMDb) 7-Eleven Promotion. That would be fun to see. Maybe I'll get a Squishee or a Pink Donut (Mmmm... Forbbidden Dooonut).

Rental Car Reservations Made

I'd done some research a couple days ago on rent-a-cars and found that Dollar was cheapest. But Sandy & I wanted to read some reviews. Well, went back and found that Dollar's prices went up (we assume due to the new month)! So, I re-checked all the prices I'd got before and now Enterprise car rentals was the cheapest (by $100, though about $150 more than Dollar's was a week ago). So this morning I placed a reservation with Enterprise for an economy-class car. Three days. This we will pick up on Friday, drive to Cooperstown, and return on Monday when we're due to catch our plane. Cost $393.82.

Hotel Reservations Made

Sandy & I have been browsing around trying to find a hotel in NYC for two nights. Sandy read many reviews, especially customer comments on various sites including Expedia, NYCTourist.com, and other places. I'd been checking out Orbitz, Expedia, and Hotels.com. We even tried Priceline, but they were not even close to being the cheapest so we didn't give them much time. Personally, I thought Hotels.com had the best interface. Great info, pictures and reviews. Easy to navigate. Unfortunately not the best bargain.

From reviews we'd read it seems most NYC hotels have tiny rooms. And several we saw in our price range didn't even offer Queen-sized beds and had no frills/perks. So we decided to put in a few extra bucks a night to get what appears to be a nice hotel. We're going to be staying at the Hampton Inn Manhattan Times Square North. It was renovated in 2005. Offers a free breakfast and our room has a flat screen TV and a King-sized bed. I even called the hotel and they'll hold our luggage until check-in at 3p (we arrive early in the morning) - no problem. In fact, the very friendly representative says it's quite common and they have a special storage area for just that reason.

Nearly all of the hotel sites appear at first glance to have the cheapest rates. But when I actually went to make the reservation they tack on extra fees ranging from $60-80. I went directly to Hampton.com and using my AAA card I was able to get a rate that was only $5 more per night, but no "recovery" fees. So saved money that way. But what really shocked me most were the NYC taxes!!! 13.38% + $3.50 secondary tax per night. Wow! Anyway, the total for two nights was $661.88. Now that's the most I've ever paid for any hotel. But really, after looking around at literally dozens of hotels, it wasn't so bad for NYC.

New Camera.

I'm a little behind, and this isn't going to be a complete post, but I wanted to put something out there. A couple of weeks ago, on May 11th, I got my new camera, a Sony DSC-T10: