With summer vacations and road trips on the horizon, here are a few tips every traveler should keep in mind:
- Want to really experience a new place? Make sure to take time to read their daily newspaper. You will seriously learn so much–especially if you travel abroad. The headlines alone will amuse you. {Most hotels abroad offer a version of their paper in English.}
- Pick a color palette to pack in and stick with it. It will totally help to limit the amount of luggage you are trying to shove into the back of a station wagon. I usually go with black {surprise!}, then, I only have to pack 1-2 pairs of shoes, and I know they will match with everything. Plus, when I coordinate, I know that if I spill something on my shirt, I don’t need a whole new outfit. It seems boring, I know, but it’s really about the experience and not lugging a million pounds of crap around with you.
- If you are flying, start pounding the water a day or two ahead of time. It will cut down on jet lag–and when you arrive, your system won’t have to work so hard to reboot to a potentially new climate.
- Pack healthy snacks. Gas station and airport food leave A LOT to be desired. It doesn’t mean you don’t get to indulge on new flavors and foods, it just means that while you are getting there, you won’t have to waste all your indulgences on over-priced gross food.
- Pack a small packet of laundry detergent and plan to wash some clothes in the hotel sink. Again, it cuts down on packing space, because you know you can wear things twice {unless you are visiting friends/family–no one will care that you don’t have a new ensemble each day, I promise.
- If you are traveling with kids, try to keep their general routine intact in order to avoid meltdowns. Bedtimes, snack times and meal times can be hard to regulate on vacations, I totally understand, but packing less into the day so that you can try to accommodate them will make your life easier.
- If a road trip is on the horizon, make sure to plan out the “getting there activities” just as much as you plan the activities once you are there. Kids stuck in a car can turn into mental terrorism for mom and dad–plan activities {coloring books, road games, movies, iPods, etc.} and regularly scheduled stops.
- Always pack a basic first aid kit. Include ibuprofen, bandages, decongestants, tums, etc.
- Call your credit card company BEFORE you go and let them know where you are going. Having them shut down your spending even for a day in an effort to protect you, can really put a damper on your vacation.
- If you are travelling abroad, scan your passport and email it to your smartphone or take a picture of it. Having that information should you lose the original {GASP!} will save your bacon.
Happy Travels,
Mavis
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Rosaleen says
You might consider an addendum to the color-coordinated packing. This worked when my boys were fairly young, but may be more difficult with teens, especially teen girls. I took off several times with my boys when hubby couldn’t take time from work. We pretty much color-coordinated all of our outfits, not with matching shirts, etc., but the same color families. Not only was packing easier, but laundry was easier. As a safety precaution, I took two Polaroid pictures. (Yes this was a LONG time ago!) One was stuck onto the refrigerator at home, the other was in the car’s glove compartment. This gave me a very recent picture, down to haircuts, so if one child was missing, I could pull out the picture and say the kid looked like this and was dressed in colors like the sibling. Hubby had access to the other picture so if I didn’t call home on schedule, he also had a very recent picture of us for the police. Now, of course, one would probably have a digital picture, but the same need for quickly identifying missing persons holds. After witnessing a panicked mother searching for a lost child in a crowd, I determined that the fewer details I needed to pull together from my racing mind, the better. If one is upset enough, the color of a child’s outfit might be misremembered, or misspoken.
lilton says
I do the same color dressing when we’re on vacation! A few years ago, we went to Disney World with our then five-year-old son. I made sure that whatever shirt he was wearing that day, that I was wearing the same color, too {and if DH had the same color shirt, too, all the better}. That way, if I needed to find my son in a crowd, I only had to look down at my own shirt to remember what color he was wearing. Even now, I try to dress my child in a brightly colored shirt when we go somewhere crowded so it’s easier to spot him if we get separated–this trick really helped a few weeks ago when we visited a new-to-us science museum with lots of exhibits to explore! I also use my label maker to make a label for the inside of his shirt or pants [somewhere pretty inconspicuous, but where he knows where it is] that has his name and cell phone numbers for my husband and me in case he gets lost {I only use this tip when we’re going someplace really big, like Disney or NYC, though}.