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Need ideas - low cost honeymoon

We need your recommendations on inexpensive getaways for a delayed honeymoon trip 1/02 or 2/02. We were hoping Hawaii (i.e. adventure, beach, hiking, wildlife), but can't seem to budget it. We are located in Boston. Your ideas would be very welcome. You can email us directly at [email protected] as well. Thanks so much!

If you want someplace warm and you're on a bit of a budget, have you looked into packeage deals to places like The Bahamas (Atlantis Resort, for instance), or St. Thomas, or Puerto Rico, or even Aruba? Each of these destinations tends to offer fair priced packages during winter, and they've all been badly hurt by the decreases in tourism this year.

Try travelzoo.com. Check out their "top 20" section. I have seen some unbelievable deals there, although I've never booked anything myself.

Me again. Regarding travelzoo.com, check out their entire site (not just the top 20 section). I just went to the site and clicked on the Caribbean section, and there were a lot of specials for all-inclusives. This might be your best bet. Good luck.

There are also a lot of nice US destinations that would make a nice honeymoon. Consider Charleston, South Carolina or St. Augustine,Florida.Both are very romantic and nice places. The north Georgia mountains are also a popular honeymoon destination. A website for some great honeymoon cabins are:www.thelastresort.com

It takes a lot of looking and maybe a good travel agent but my friends were able to get air & 6 nights in Cancun w/ air for $1300pp from Pittsburgh. Maybe try Expedia or the Airlines vacation web pages & see what is avail?

$2600 for two people to Cancun for 6 days is not a big trick, unless you require a room at the Ritz there. Package deal air will eat up $800. That leaves $300 per day for hotel and food.

I meant $1300 for the two of them.

KT: I don't know what your budget is, but I just booked a flight from NYC to Honolulu for $301 roundtrip!!! There is a huge sale going on now. You just might be able to swing Hawaii.

When I lived in Boston, we took a number of amazing trips on small budgets. I realize it will be cold, but have you considered a cozy Vermont B&B followed by a romantic time in Montreal and Quebec City? We did this trip, in February of 99 and had an amazing time.

Could you tell us more about the $301- fare you got from NYC to HNL? Which airline, from which airport in NYC and how many stops, changes, layovers? I found fares for around $331- from Delta but they involve both stops, plane changes and layovers. To the best of my knowledge, the only way to go non-stop to HNL from the NY area is either on Contintental, out of Newark (EWR) from around $700- or on a charter out of JFK. (ATA?), which the last I checked could be a lot less but had far fewer flights (and maybe even no non-stop on the return flight) (all prices quoted above are r.t.)

If you're willing to forego luxuries, and put-up w/ flights w/ stops, plane-changes and lay-overs (esp. 'red-eye' hours), you may very well be able to fit Hawaii into your budget. Try sites like Frommers.com and bestfares.com and lowestfare.com and subscribe to their email newsletters/alerts. You also want to consider Hotwire and Priceline if you can be flexible. (for accomodations, airfare, car-rentals or just one or two of the three). Have you tried looking for packages from Apple, Pleasant Hawaiian or Funjet? Just want to make sure that you really mean for this or next month and that you didn't actually mean next year ('03). It's short-notice for this or next month but you may still be able to put something together, esp. due to the current reduction in tourism. Apple (and perhaps some of the others) often have last-minute deals. There is also the last-minute deals at Travelocity, Orbitz (and at least one other site that I can't recall now) that seem to be all from the same undisclosed parent source. If you can get a good airfare, you have a lot of options for inexpensive lodging that you may very well still be able to book. B&B's, condos. , vacation rentals, and low-cost hotels are all possibilites- on all of the islands. You may want to try the accomodation search at http://gohawaii.com (the official HCVB site) and perhaps vrbo.com and vacationspot.com for rentals.

Jeff: Flying American from JFK to Honolulu with a change in LA, one hour between flights. Trip is for mid-January, returning beginning of Feb. You should really go to Orbitz(www.orbitz.com), they give you all airlines fares and then check each individual airlines own site to see if you can beat Orbitz. For the days I planned to travel, I could fly American, United, Delta or Continential for less than $350 roundtrip and all with just one change of plane, minimal time between.