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| BASICS | TRAVELING IN THE US |
| MAPS & DRIVING DIRECTIONS | FOREIGN TRAVEL |
| TRAVELING IN SOUTH CAROLINA | OTHER RESOURCES |
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Basics The following sites offer discounts and package deals and are good one-stop sites for making all your travel arrangements. Find the best airfare, rent a car, book a hotel room or a cruise all on one site. They offer new travel deals every day, and most have city and attraction guides, and corporate travel deals. |
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| Expedia also offers travel alerts, passport information, and even Eurail passes. | Priceline is unique in that you can name the price you'd like to pay and get offers back based on that. You can save money on airfare, rental cars, hotels, and cruises as well as whole vacation packages. | |
| Travelocity also has a "Student Travel" section with deals just for student travelers and links to youth hostels. They also have extensive destination guides. | ||
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Maps & Driving Directions |
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| MapQuest has maps for over 250 countries and territories, and driving directions available for both North America and Europe. The driving directions tell you how many miles away your destination is and an estimate of how long it will take to get there. With their Trip Planner you can also locate attractions and other entertainment along your route, find hotels, restaurants, even banks and dry cleaners. | On MSN Maps & Directions you'll find a world atlas and maps of North America, Mexico, and Europe and links to traffic maps, city guides, phone directories, weather info, and more. You can choose the directions to be in kilometers or miles, and you can choose between the quickest route and the shortest one. | |
| Discover South Carolina, the official tourism website of South Carolina, has an events calendar, trip planner, discount packages, maps, and SC facts. They also have a great State Park locator, with information and links to every state park in SC so you can find the best place to hike, go canoeing, camp out, find the best waterfalls, and more. | SCIway's Travel and Tourism page has links to lots of places to stay and things to do in South Carolina, from the beaches to the foothills, plus maps, weather, convention centers, and more. | |
| The South Carolina Aquarium on Charleston Harbor has a two story, 300,000 gallon "Great Ocean Exhibit" tank complete with sharks, barracuda, and thousands of other ocean plants and animals. Their "UFO" exhibit includes jellyfish, seahorses, and other oddities of the sea. You'll also find river otters, alligators, sea turtles and snakes, and from their observation deck, it's not uncommon to spot bottle-nosed dolphins playing in the harbor. | The South Carolina Botanical Garden at Clemson University covers nearly 300 acres and includes an arboretum of Southeastern trees and plants, a wildflower meadow, a geology museum, a camellia garden with over 300 varieties, a butterfly garden, a meditation garden, nature trails, nature-based sculptures, and much more. Admission to the gardens is free and it is open every day of the year from dawn until dusk. | |
| The South Carolina State Museum in Columbia is located downtown in a refurbished 1890's textile mill. The main focus of the museum is art, history, and natural history in South Carolina, but they also have science and technology exhibits and nationally touring exhibits of both art and natural history. They are planning an expansion in 2005 to include an observatory, planetarium, and large scale theatre. | The Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia is home to more than lion, tigers, and bears. You'll also see endangered black rhinos, giraffes, and zebras in the "African Plains"; koalas, wallabies, and emus in the "Koala Knockabout"; an aquarium/reptile house, "Lemur Island", a sea lion pool, and much more. | |
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Frommer's is one of the best known names in travel guides, and
their large, easily browsed website offers a lot of great information.
You can browse by region, state, national park or monument, or by
pursuits, such as bird watching, beaches, etc. They also have helpful
hints for saving money and links to travel deals.
Note: the
library carries many of Frommer's travel guides.
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GORP.com is a great site for the outdoorsman. There is tons of information about camping and hiking, skiing, diving and snorkeling, horseback riding, and climbing; and for the meeker adventurer there is also information on fishing, a list of the best scenic drives, best beaches, and bird watching. You'll also find a national park guide, lots of family travel ideas, and their "Close to Home" feature tells you what exotic adventures are lurking close enough to visit for the day or for a weekend. GORP focuses mainly on the US, but there are adventures listed from every corner of the globe. | |
| Electronic Embassy links to all available foreign embassies in Washington D.C. with websites, and additional contact information where websites are not available. (Beware that some links may inadvertently lead to commercial sites using similar urls.) Embassies have timely, official information about current events in their country. | Frommer's is one of the best known names in travel guides, and their large, easily browsed website offers a lot of great information. You can browse by area of the world or by interest, such as beaches, gambling, theme parks, etc.; or even lifestyle, such as family, senior, single, disabled, etc. They also have helpful hints for saving money and links to travel deals. Note: the library carries many of Frommer's travel guides. | |
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The Tourism Offices Worldwide Directory
has links to the official
tourism sites of hundreds of countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe, and for
all 50 states. The US Department of State's "Travel and Living Abroad" section contains information about how and where to obtain a passport and necessary visas, warnings about health issues and other threats posed to Americans while traveling abroad, as well as currency exchange rates, Customs information, and Airline and Cruise ship safety data. |
World Information: Extensive information including history of each country, politics, major businesses, imports/exports, agriculture, forestry, media and advertising, health and welfare, languages, population and education statistics, and more. Includes a Business Directory which links to the country's Chambers of Commerce, major banks, Embassies, and Ministries. Also includes tourism information from outdoor recreation to hotel reservations, to weather, currency exchange rates, time zones, and much more. Suggests further readings and other web sites. | |
| Other Resources | ||
| The library carries hundreds of travel guides, and several travel related magazines available to be checked out. In the headquarters branch the travel books are on the top floor, and the magazines are on the main floor. Also, ask at the Information desk upstairs about the library's Pamphlet File, which includes maps and travel information for many foreign countries as well as the United States. | Google's Travel directory page | |
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*The Spartanburg County Public Library is not responsible for the creation of, or changes to, any web site listed in this pathfinder. Parents are responsible for their children's online activities.* |
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This page maintained by Christina Calitri.
