Travels with Alex

What is it about travel? So broadening, so exciting, so fulfilling. And yet something always seems to be missing...what could it be?

Me, of course. Or rather, my carefully accumulated, if modest, store of travel-related wisdom. At last, hear it is, ready to be assimilated and deployed by my many loyal fans.

Traveler's Aid

You gotta travel with water -- at least one liter on a transcontinental or intercontinental flight. What else do you need to pack? Here are my picks.

Aeroplan
-o-
rama

For the frequent frequent flyer, Aeroplan is like really large denominations of Canadian Tire money. Here are some ideas on getting the most out of your Aeroplan bookings.

If you’re looking for general travel inspiration, check out Frommers.com. This site keeps track of the latest travel deals (mostly for US departures), and has lots of tips on topics like undiscovered tropical vacations, how to rent a car cheaply, or how to find a great cruise. (Yeah, I think that’s an oxymoron, too….well almost. See below.)

Words
to the Webbed

Saving money by booking on the web takes a bit of work, and a bit of time. Sometimes you get the best hotel deal on a discount site – and sometimes you find it on a major travel site like Expedia or Travelocity.

My favorite travel site these days is Tripadvisor.com. Tripadvisor is great because it rounds up deals, reviews, and notes from different travel sites. You can use it as a starting point for planning a trip; or you can use it to look up a hotel deal you find on hoteldiscount.com before making your booking.

Tripadvisor points to reviews on other sites like Concierge.com, Frommers.com, and Fodors.com, and also links to user reviews on sites like DigitalCity. I especially like reading reviews from “regular” hotel visitors, since they can point out issues that major guidebooks don’t address.

Hoteldiscount.com is usually my starting point for finding a good deal on a hotel. But I’ve learned not to trust the star rating that the web site assigns to hotels – double-check with a guidebook or another web site. If you’re as picky as I am, you may want to look at a couple of sources; if possible, get a sense of the guidebook or website’s standards by looking up a hotel you’ve already stayed in. The deals on hoteldiscount.com sometimes offer big savings over other available prices, but once you book, your credit card is charged, and you will have to pay a fee if you cancel.

Finally, if you are planning to bring a special friend on your trip, check out Takeyourpet.com – their $2 membership fee is well worth it for access to a long list of pet-friendly accommodation in the US and Canada.

Now, back to that cruise. If all this advice helps you score the vacation-in-lifetime, and you’re looking for a way to repay the favour, check out Geekcruises. It’s probably the only way you could ever convinced me to take a cruise, and Rob and I would both be eternally grateful.

New-Skin is a Band-Aid alternative, but that scarcely does justice to its many life-enhancing applications. Basically it’s like nail polish for your skin: a transparent layer that seals up small cuts or abrasions, blocking bacteria and speeding the healing process.

New-Skin is great for those of us with an allergy to Band-Aid glue (yeah, it’s pathetic, but at least I don’t have to carry around one of those epinephrine guns). It’s also fantastic for covering up those little nicks you might get in your cuticles during a long, dry winter – now they can actually heal!

Perhaps best of all, it can prevent or heal blisters if you apply a couple of layers to any part of your feet that is abraded by a pair of new (or old) shoes. It’s a great thing to take with you when traveling, since you never know when a walking vacation is going to leave you with sore toes.

You can find New-Skin (or generic equivalents) in the first aid section of drugstores in North America and Europe.

Happy Travelers: The Ingredients

Some goodies to keep you happy on the road
and in the air.

This is an ancient family remedy, tracing all the way back to my mother, who believes that any physical ailment can be cured by taking one effervescent vitamin C an hour until you are either cured or get the runs, whichever comes first. Yes, sick days were a pile of laughs in our house.
Many years late I have rediscovered Redoxon as the key to preventing colds when traveling. It used to be close to inevitable that I’d catch a cold after taking a long flight. Now I take one before flying, one in the air, and one sometime after flying. I never get post-flight colds, and now I have X-Ray vision.
Remember, this ain’t just any vitamin C tablet. It’s 1000 mg of vitamin C in effervescent form, which means that you drop a tablet in a glass of water and get to have seconds of fun watching it fizz and dissolve. (Do note that if you’re taking one by cramming a tablet into a bottle of water, you might want to leave the cap off – or risk the bottle exploding.) The idea is that it’s more absorbable in effervescent form.
Redoxon is available at drugstores in Canada in either orange or lemon flavour – I prefer the lemon. It’s also available in England in delicious blackberry (if you find it, save some for me!) In the US you can buy packets of effervescent vitamin C under the brand name Emergen-C, but it’s usually more expensive than Redoxon.

iPod

Apple’s MP3 player is small enough to pack, and big enough to pack a whallop. 5 gigabytes (the size of my iPod) is big enough to hold about fifty Original Broadway Cast albums, plus another five hundred rock or jazz songs in case you need a break from all that Broadway madness (it’s never happened to me, but I hear it’s possible.) That doesn’t just keep you busy for the flight –it’s all the music you need for a good, long vacation. And if it’s not just a vacation, but a sabbatical, consider the new 10 or 20 gig models.

Neck pillow

You know those dorky little U-shaped pillows? Well, they make it possible to get a decent nap back in cattle-class. Of course I am a mind-bogglingly talented sleeper, so I’m not the best test, but they sure work for me.

Ear plugs

If you think you may want to sleep, pack ear plugs. I like the little foam kinds. They have saved me on a several baby-ridden flights.