I’m on vacation right now. While you’re reading this, I’m off exploring museums, architecture, parks and cafes. Monsiuer Mengel and I are spending two weeks in Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris. And in large part, it’s due to social media. Here’s my guide to European Vacation, social media-style.

1. Win free airfare by entering a blog contest

Yes, be jealous. We flew business class on OpenSkies from JFK to AMS courtesy of tickets I won from travel blog Gadling.com. The site was celebrating its anniversary by giving a pair of tickets away. All you had to do was leave a comment on their blog post and one commenter was randomly selected to win the tickets. That just happened to be lil’ ol’ me!

2. Start following various travel resources on Twitter

Over the past few months, I’ve been following accounts such as @raileurope and @visitholland. Both were helpful in offering information that allowed me to plan and make decisions about our trip. If I happened to notice a tweet about something I wanted to do or read more about on our trip, I would favorite the tweet as a way of bookmarking. A week before leaving, I went back and read through those favorited tweets and made some notes. I also enlisted help from local Albany twitterers for suggestions on the best way to get down to JFK (turns out this is the fastest and cheapest option).

3. Read travel blogs and bookmark content on Delicious and Evernote

I regularly read Gadling, Budget Travel’s This Just In and the New York Times Travel section/blog. Anytime I came across an article offering tips, advice or deals on the cities we were visiting, I bookmarked them via Delicious and tagged them as Europe. Sometimes I chose the “Do Not Share” option in Delicious, just so I wasn’t constantly sending out random articles via FriendFeed. Before the trip, I logged in to Delicious and sorted by the “Europe” tag, printing and highlighting any specific information I wanted to take with me. I also had a few conversations with friends who’d been to Amsterdam and captured their suggestions in an Evernote file that I can refer back to.

4. Check out hotels using TripAdvisor and Hotels.com review boards

We’re quite lucky in that we’re staying at a friend’s empty apartment while in Paris, but I needed to book hotels for Amsterdam, The Hague and Brussels. I relied heavily on the TripAdvisor message boards to make sure I wouldn’t be checking us in to a filthy hotel in a seedy part of town. (Sometimes there’s a reason for seemingly good hotel deals.) I also cross checked the amenities listed for each hotel with reviews done by people who had actually stayed there (is breakfast really free? Do they have WiFi in the rooms or just the common areas?).

5. Use Google StreetView to get the lay of the land

The apartment we’ll be staying in when we get to Paris next week is a bit out of town, near La Defense. We located it on Google Maps and then used the StreetView function to find restaurants that our friend recommended, find a nearby grocery store, and determine what landmarks we need to look for to point us in the right direction when we pop up from the Metro.

6. Pack some good old fashioned guide books

Since I don’t have an iPhone (wah), I can’t take advantage of this totally slick Amsterdam app that would tell me what to see, where nearby restaurants are, what museums are open, and more. So I’ll have to count on Frommer’s, Lonely Planet, and some printed e-mails with recommendations from friends to help us plan out our days. But hopefully next time I head to Europe, it’ll be with an iPhone that can calculate exchange rates, pull up Metro maps, tell me current museum discounts and even translate French on the fly. Someday.

So, that’s how I got here. I’ve scheduled a few posts for while I’m gone, so hopefully you won’t miss me too much. And I plan to check in every now and then with the laptop to see how everyone’s doing and share a photo or two. I trust y’all to hold down the fort.

Until I get back… Vaarwell – Tot ziens – Au revoir!

Image via Flickr user pedrosimoes7