The Crystal Ball

We have got six weeks of autumn vacation to plan, so it seems a bit premature to have already started planning a trip even further into the future. Still, that's what happened as we had a rainy day yesterday and an Internet connection.

We know that after school begins in the fall, we'll take advantage of the cheaper tickets to go to Sri Lanka for a month. On our way back to Canada we expect to spend several more weeks exploring bits of Thailand, Cambodia, and Taiwan. Some of the smaller trips are necessary to use up expiring Cathay Pacific reward miles.

You would think this would be enough to satisfy the most keen appetite for travel-planning. Yet, when scanning the 2009 holidays, we noticed that Christmas falls on a Friday this year. So with little need to waste vacation days, it will be possible to take a week or so right into the new year.

The last time we stayed in New York City was during the spring of 2005. We enjoyed the city's busy atmosphere. We've decided it's time to do it again in the winter. Knowing that it cannot possibly be as fun as it looks on TV, we will usher in 2010 in Times Square. It just seems like one of those things that everybody should be able to say they've done at least once.

Yesterday afternoon, I booked a room for eight nights at the Greenpoint YMCA in Brooklyn. On the last trip, we stayed at two different YMCAs in Manhattan but it seems like it'll be nearly as convenient to stay in the nearby borough. Until quite recently, it would not have been possible to check out the options so thoroughly and accurately. As well as pulling up NYC's YMCA website, we checked the MTA subway system to make sure it'd only take minutes to get to the tourist sites. Then, using Google Earth, we not only located the old building but got a feel of the area through Street View.