For a Room with a View

"For any country to be a country, you have to have an air force, a football team, and a beer. You can get by without the air force and the football team, but you have to have a beer." -- Frank Zappa

Remember what it was like to plan a vacation before the internet came along? I can't. How do you know what you're going to get, when you get there? And why pay 800 dollars for an achingly hip hotel room, when online, you pay less than half price and suffer half the pain?

We're heading to the Hunter - my spiritual home - and preparing to get gloriously wasted. Not about to assign the outcome of our trip to a lottery, we've done everything online this time - which is heaps more exhilirating than outsourcing it to some travel agent anyway.

Now you can peruse and book everything from plain ol' air tickets to gorgeous seaside resorts and vineyard cottages - complete with 360 degree pictures and reviews. Want a degustation meal that will do serious damage to the waistline and the bottomline? Restaurants like Aria and est and Pello even post their entire menus and prices - a sign of supreme culinary confidence in a city full of cut-throat copies, I say. You can even book a table all the way from Singapore.

And yes, I think, we have mastered the art of what I call room-pouncing. That means trawling through last-minute sites - where top-rate hotels get rid of unreserved rooms cheaply-and finding that perfect hotel. Then you wait patiently for the room to be offered on the date you want. Do not be deceived, this is surprisingly nerve-racking stuff - as the rooms are only up for grabs a week or two before your trip, and may be snapped up before you know it.

Why do we do it, then? Partly for the thrill of the chase, and mostly for the savings we can blow on a dinner at est. So far, the most amazing thing was paying 120 bucks for a Sydney studio apartment and getting upgraded to a luxurious penthouse when we checked-in. I hope we have birthday luck this time around.