Use Kayak Explore for Travel Ideas

I wanted to round out this week on travel with a heads up about a really cool service from Kayak called Kayak Explore. Many of you probably already use Kayak for researching airline prices and whatnot, but Explore is a cool feature when you're not sure where you want to go but you know how much you want to spend.

Kayak is a travel site aggregator of sorts, and Explore uses the powerful Kayak engine to let you know how far your budget will take you in any direction. It's perfect for spur-of-the-moment weekend travel as well as longer term vacation planning. You just input the city you'll be leaving from, tell Explore how much you want to spend and, voila, the map populates all the places you can get to for that money or less.

You can expand your search by inputting parameters such as the things you're interested in doing at the destination (beach, gambling, golf, skiing, etc...) and you can even narrow things down by temperature. I was goofing around a minute ago and found out I can get to Marrakesh, Morocco from Paris for $80. I just might have to do that while my wife and kids are in the States for the next week.

Maybe my vacation isn't over just yet...

Anyway, it's a cool service I thought you guys might find useful, so there you have it. If you take away anything from my posts this week, it should be how important travel is. Travel excites the mind, gives you something to look forward to, and makes you a more interesting and well-rounded person. The time you spend on vacation pays big dividends when you get back to the grind. Never underestimate how important it is to expand your world view and experience other cultures, even if it's just to lay on their beaches and sip

Have a great weekend, and we'll get back to the finance stuff next week (if I'm not in Marrakesh, of course).