There was once a time when Blonde had more trouble coming up with the time than the money to travel. My how things have changed! And with more time there’s only more desire for travel so the obvious, most practical solution is to plan on winning contests to fund the trips and travel goodies desired!
Brunette is the contest-finding equivalent of a drug-sniffing dog so unearths many opportunities. Just as Blonde was starting to think entering all of these contests was a waste of time (that she could be using to take a nap) she won a couple! There’s no stopping us now!
The picture above is from a failed – unimaginable as that be given the talent exhibited – effort to win a free iPhone cover from LifeProof. Blonde is a dropper and splasher of electronics and this case would help to save her from herself. So, despite sitting in the living room in a snorkel mask, having a paper cutout of a LifeProof jacket on her phone and using Apple’s PhotoBooth program she didn’t win. It had to be rigged.
However, soon after, while on a trip to Spain, Blonde got an email saying she’d won a trip for two to go to Puerto Rico and stay at El Conquistador. She thought is was a scam but Brunette recalled the contest and it was real. It was so badly run and took so much follow-up to get the promised rewards it wouldn’t have been worth it to someone who did something productive with her life. No problem for Blonde so off we jetted and enjoyed!
Then a Facebook contest (they’re the worst – must be managed by Congress) came along for a free trip to Papua New Guinea. When entering you answer a series of questions and they tell you what tribe you would be part of. The picture above is what Blonde would look like as a Huli Wigman (Wigwoman?). Apparently that’s a tribe that steals your soul – or at least your eyes, nose and mouth. Fine – fair trade for a trip to New Guinea. Still hoping on that one.
Then along came another email notification to Blonde – she’d won a $1,900 gift certificate to Canyon Ranch and $400 in airfare! (OK, so she tried and failed to peddle the gift certificate.) She’s booked for two nights in February and looking forward to a $255 facial. That price has to include a facelift! And she can drive to Canyon Ranch in Lenox, MA so that’s $400 in future Jet Blue travel that brings a smile to her soon to be fab face.
Brunette always enters the contests but actually wants Blonde to win. Why? Because if Brunette wins her crabby husband might want to go along and she doesn’t want that! He has no illusion that Blonde will be asking him to be her travel companion – even though Brunette says “go ahead, take him”. She actually says that a lot – and not only to her sister.
We have even entered contests that depend on more than chance – they require some actual talent and we recently semi-won one! The grand prize was for a month of travel in 4 European cities staying at apartments provided by GoWithOh. Bloggers galore submitted entries telling who they would travel with, what city they’d select and what they would do there. This one took a lot of work (well, for someone who doesn’t work). We came in second and were quite thrilled. Our semi- winning entry about Berlin got us three future nights in Europe staying in a cool apartment.
Another attempt to win a contest that had a first prize of a several thousand dollar stay at a luxury resort resulted in another third place finish. There was a big drop-off in prize value from first to third.
And now some shameless begging (which we’ve done previously for this contest but our dreams die hard). We are trying to win 12 nights in the Cayman Islands via a truly poorly run contest on Facebook. You can vote once a day but it’s kind of a pain to figure out how to even find our – massively unflattering- picture but we’re here to help you help us!
Click on this link and it will bring up the contest page.
At the top is a little drop down menu of “Challenges”. Pick Christmas Tree Challenge #10 then vote for this picture – repeatedly. And don’t think we don’t watch that vote ticker because we do!
Obviously we should also enter a contest where the prize is to figure out how to get all of your photos to show up as the same size on your blog but we have our sights set on bigger things!
We will say, do and show astounding things to attempt to win free travel and, with some success in 2012, it isn’t going to get better in 2013! If you follow us on Twitter (BlBrTravel) we tweet contests (and hope no one else enters them and we just get the bonus point) and we share them on our delightful Facebook page (which you are welcome to visit and to “Like”).
Here’s one of the earliest desperate attempts by Blonde to win a contest – she failed to win but succeeded in making a fool of herself in front of a sidewalk of gawking onlookers!