Dedicated Post: Perfect San Francisco Getaway Trips With Kids - Don’t Ruin Your Vacation

When G, our son, was 6 months old, we took him to New York City. The trip was not relaxing and fun to say the least! The 5 hour flight, which everyone warned us about, wasn’t an issue at all – G was a fantastic flyer. What was tough was the planning, plus having to stuff all his “essentials” in two suitcases, and being cooped up in one room on the 14^th floor with a very active kid. The worst part was having no kitchen, which meant we had to clean his bottles in the bathroom!

Since that trip, we have taken numerous others, and the best ones have always been in and around San Francisco, like Tahoe, Mendocino, Sonoma, Paso Robles, Yosemite, and Santa Cruz. There are so many wonderful getaways in the San Francisco area that you can always find the right vacation spot to satisfy both parents and kids. Plus, traveling locally means that we can stuff our car to the hilt so that G always feels at home no matter where he is. And finally, we started staying in amazing vacation rentals instead of hotels – which means we have a kitchen, play area and lots of space!

Now, planning these trips was not as rosy as it sounds. Finding and reserving vacation rentals was a very time consuming process with lots of back and forth emails, phone calls and even faxes. Furthermore, there was always the risk of getting scammed when dealing with complete strangers. Frustrated with the overly manual vacation rental reservation process, we started Zaranga.

Zaranga not only makes the reservation process super easy (so that the experience of booking a vacation rental is similar to booking hotels from your favorite sites), but it also allows guests to make an offer by naming a price (think Priceline!). Negotiations and deals are extremely common in the vacation rental market, but before Zaranga, it was not so easy to do that! While being able to name a price in Zaranga allows guests to score great deals, hosts use that to drive up bookings.

Scams are eliminated by Zaranga mainly by listing professionally managed properties, which in addition to security, means that the house quality and service is top notch. Finally, Zaranga is focused on getaways around metropolitan areas, with our initial focus on destinations around the San Francisco Bay Area. Check out some quality listings from Zaranga - Lake Tahoe Vacation Rentals and Mendocino Vacation Rentals.

Zaranga is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and has its own blog. These are all great sources to learn about Zaranga’s ongoing deals, war stories and more.  

Coming back to G - he is 4 now and cannot wait to check out his favorite animal – dinosaurs - at the American Museum of Natural History. We have to go to New York soon for him, and also to erase the memories from our last trip!

About Author & Zaranga

Anirban Bardalaye is the CEO and co-founder of Zaranga (www.zaranga.com), which is the only online marketplace for vacation rentals that allows users to make offers by naming their price. Zaranga is focused on professionally managed properties in getaways around metropolitan areas and currently has properties in vacation destinations around the San Francisco Bay Area.  Zaranga is based in San Francisco and is backed by major Silicon Valley investors.

This post was written and sponsored by Zaranga.