The Holiday season is upon us once again. Millions will be taking to the skies to visit loved ones. Yet with rising fuel costs, dozens of surcharges, and perks at a bare minimum, the skies aren’t as friendly as they once were. Flying used to be a treat, something that people dressed up for and made an occasion out of. Flight attendants weren’t just there for your safety, but to also ensure your comfort and care. It often seems like flight attendants can’t be bothered to bring that extra glass of water for your five-hour flight. And why should they? They are often over worked as it is. And to get that extra level of care that used to be the norm, you have to fly first or business class. But in this economy, it’s just not the reality for 99% of us. With people being packed into flying Greyhound buses like cattle, flying has become rather stressful as opposed to a treat. So lately, I’ve relied on myself to add my own touch of class to air travel. Instead of relying on the airline to treat me well, I take a little extra time before departure to ensure I will have my own little treat in the sky. And on every flight I’ve done this, I’ve received envious compliments from passengers wishing they had done the same. The most common remark, “Oh wow, you’ve made your own First Class!” First: Receiving a newspaper or magazine was rather common on airlines before. And while some airlines still have a great magazine of their own to peruse, it will not hold you over for the long flights. The night before a flight, I take a minute to download a magazine or book that I’ve been...

Most of us at once point or another have spent a few nights in a hotel room.  While many travel for business, it’s the big vacation that we all look forward to.  In planning your perfect trip, the hotel you stay in is a big part of the equation.  Well, I have a tip that will keep your vacation going, well after you’ve arrived back home. In picking the perfect hotel for vacation, your decision is usually based on three things: price, location, and amenities.  You might be looking for one with a giant pool, or one with activities for the kids, perhaps a casino, or one that is simply steps off the beach for under $100 a night.  Picking the right hotel can make or break a vacation, not just from a financial standpoint, but also for the fun factor. Whatever your choice, as long as you had a good time on your trip and enjoyed your hotel – there’s one simple thing you can do to keep the fun of the trip with you: TAKE THE COMPLIMENTARY SHAMPOO & CONDITIONERS. Why would I want to do that when I have the good stuff at home? The simple answer is YOU PAID FOR IT.  Most hotels include basic toiletries as part of your room rate and will replenish fresh bottles each day housekeeping cleans the room.  If you are staying multiple nights, keep putting the bottles away, each time they are restocked. Here’s the logic behind my reasons why… I first did this on years ago during a stay at the Borgata Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City.  I loved the special mint crème shampoo they had in the room and decided I didn’t want to just leave it behind to get tossed out. ...

The other day Ernessa posted a blog about longing for her dream trip and regrets of trips not taken. It inspired me to write this blog. My husband and I have quite the list of dream trips that we plan on taking. We’ve already taken a few (Bora Bora, a summer in Europe, and a cross country road trip) but we have an extensive list, and being that life is short, we really need to get cracking. We know we will be taking a trip this winter…and we’ve saved up enough travel points to make it happen, but where exactly? That is what we are unsure of. Christmas in the Alps? Playing with the elephants in Thailand? An Outback adventure in Oz? Or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro? As we work on making our dream trip a reality, I wanted to share a few ideas and tips to help get you that much closer to your dreams. 1. Paradise Falls: JP and I were inspired by the Disney/Pixar movie, Up. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out on some cinematic greatness. The protagonist couple of the movie is in love with idea of travel. Their dream trip is to visit a magical place called Paradise Falls. All their lives they scrimp and save to take their dream trip, but cars break down, and roofs need replaced, and they constantly need to break their savings bank. Sadly, they never make the trip together. After JP and I watched this movie, we made a commitment to each other that we wouldn’t let this happen to us. We set up our own savings account called Paradise Falls that is separate from all of our other accounts. It exists solely to pay for our travels, and is never to be touched,...

Some trips are all about the journey. Other trips are all about the destination. Then, there are those trips that are all about coming home and kissing the floor because you’re so fucking happy to be back that you don’t care how much dog hair sticks to your lips. Last weekend I went to Albany to visit my grandparents in the nursing home, attend Rosh Hashannah services and take in a spontaneous funeral just for fun. Care to guess which type of trip this was? Like stepping over a dead cat on my way in to work, visiting Albany is a depressing and unsettling break in my routine. It’s an inconvenient but unavoidable opportunity to contemplate mortality, the fragility of life and all the other horrible shit that I don’t ever want to fucking think about. In fact, according to AllTheOtherHorribleShitThatIDontEverWantToFuckingThinkAbout.com, “mortality and the fragility of life” was ranked just below “picturing Jan Brewer having sex with her gardener and screaming ‘Ay, papi! punch a hole in that wall, and fill me with your anchor babies! There are 2 week old eggs up there with more civil rights than you could DREAM of!’” (her gardener was born and raised in Phoenix), but less horrible than “Mitt Romney ACTUALLY becoming the next US president” – which has been number one on the Horrible Shit list ever since replacing “Herman Cain ACTUALLY becoming the next US President”, which replaced “Michelle Bachman ACTUALLY becoming the next US President”, which replaced “Rick Perry ACTUALLY becoming the next US President”. Sigh.  I miss the Republican Primary debates. It was like watching the Heat play the Lakers and cheering for gruesome knee injuries (just as long as they’re all right for the next Olympics because I am a shameless Gold...

A travel journal is a kind of quest tale. In 1970 poet Edward Field journeyed to Afghanistan questing for Sufis (as a Gurdjieff fan); “sex, as all travelers are;” and “a little hotel clinging to a rock in the middle of a rushing river” which he saw in a National Geographic in his dentist’s waiting room. And while a tourist goes looking for sights and souvenirs, a lone traveler with a notebook is seeking transformation. Kabuli Days: Travels in Old Afghanistan is the journal of his inner and outer travels, published forty years later but still relevant. Afghanistan is ever with us. 1970 was only three years before Afghanistan’s king was deposed and the Russians invaded, before the mujahedeen and the Taliban and the decades of wars that still continue. Field’s an accomplished poet (After the Fall: Poems Old and New, 2007, among many others) and memoirist (The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag, 2006, on Greenwich Village bohemia), known for a direct poetic voice, “the simple language of truth.” Born in 1924, he became a poet in World War II. He was in his mid-forties when he wrote these pages. A travel journal takes its shape not from authorial design, like a novel, but the inescapable rhythms and patterns of a life, wrapped around the spine of a journey. Still, from Mashad, Iran, across the border to Kabul by bus, the first leg of his trip sets up scenes and themes that will recur again and again. Crowded bus rides on painful benches over rough roads past ruins, children squeezed in anywhere, with passengers from all over the world, Swiss and Pakistanis, English and Australians and French, until the bus breaks down in the desert. Field has a poet’s close eye for people...