Travel Tips and Strategies Archives - Page 10 of 13

Apr 03 2011

Day before Family travel – healthy meals

The day before a family trip tends to be the most hectic in the trip planning phase. Last minute bag checks, reservation verifications, cleaning and organizing the house are a few of the many action items that tend to be on our To Do List. Sometimes what happens in the midst of all the commotion, is that we lose our healthy eating habits and reach for something fast, which has the tendency to also be unhealthy. And if we’re feeling particularly anxious (or lazy), we may even opt to grab take-out (though you definitely can make healthy choices with take-out, why not save those extra funds for your trip?). However, we don’t have to make poor choices when rushing about the day before we hit the road.

To recap, here are some meal options to consider:

1. Breakfast for Dinner

2. Sandwiches with fruit and salad

3. Grilled Chicken/Cold Cuts on Salad

4. Turkey cutlets (sauteed) with side of string beans and/or fried potatoes

5. Baked/Grilled Fish with salad

6. Spaghetti and turkey meat sauce with a side of spinach

All of these meals take less than 30 minutes to cook. Using frozen vegetables instead of fresh vegetables can help cut down on preparation time as you’d cook them straight from the bag. Use paper plates, cups, and utensils so that you have minimal items to clean up. Your goal is to get out of the kitchen as quickly as possible and get to focusing 100% on your trip.

What do you do for dinner the night before a family trip?

Mar 09 2011

Top 10 Tips For Getting Away With Great Family Travel Deals

Travel for me always encompasses doing a bit of research for getting the best prices and deals. It’s never a cumbersome effort because in general, I just love saving money. Even if I were a billionaire, I think I’d still look for a break! The following 10 tips are tools that I often use to get some great family travel deals.

TRAVEL PORTALS

1. In order to find the best deals on air, car and hotels, I use travel portal services such as tripadvisor.com or cheaptickets.com. Their results are pretty comparable as they both sweep a number of sites for the lowest prices on the internet.

TRAVEL ALERTS

2. Another way that I keep myself up to date with deals is by signing up for travel alerts from companies such as airfarewatchdog.com, travelzoo.com, and cheapoair.com. Setting up an alert system is quick and easy and the alerts come straight to my email account. Editing or canceling alerts is not a hassle and the sites don’t trash my Inbox with a load of other messages extraneous to what I signed up for.

SOCIAL MEDIA

3. If a company provides the Tweet feature, I sign up for deal tweets to be directed to my Twitter account. If I am searching for deals in preparation for a trip, then I will have their tweets pushed directly to my cell phone. This way I’m getting the alerts instantaneously. For most really good deals, you only have minutes to act on them before they are gone. Case in point: a friend of mine is flying to Paris next month for $175 round trip! Five minutes after purchasing her tickets, the deal was gone.

PLANNING AHEAD

4. The lead-time I give myself for planning a trip depends on the time of year of my trip; how far I’m going; how long I’m going for; if the trip is local or overseas; my familiarity with my destination; and overall, how much planning is involved. I remember that my grandmother would plan her trips 8 – 12 months in advance, which I always thought was unbelievably incredible and super-duper organized. I am no where near to being that good.

A trip to South Carolina or Pennsylvania, two states very familiar to my family, would only require me to plan about 2-4 weeks in advance. All of this is assuming that we are driving, which we normally do. During peak travel such as summer, Christmas, Thanksgiving, & Spring Break, the hotel needs to be booked 5-8 weeks in advance. A trip to California or Florida would require at least a 3 month lead-time for me to get the better deals.

OFF-PEAK SEASON

5. In general, I get the best deals in the off-peak season whether I am traveling on or off-peak. Late September to early October is a great time for me to book Spring Break travel because for the most part, those booking travel at that time are looking at Thanksgiving travel. February is a good time for me to book summer travel because most people are booking travel for Spring Break at that time.

VALUE OF REVIEWS

6. Some deals are best known by other travelers. I enjoy reading reviews on sites like tripadvisor.com to not only find out the best places to go for entertainment but also to get an idea of what people paid for their accommodations. These reviews are a valuable source of information from a variety of individuals, majority of which are not paid employees.

THE ARCHIVES

7. I will also consult the archives of my blog for posts about To-Do-Lists to check the time of year that I booked my travel – the main item on the list. More than likely I got a great price at that time, and I can use that list as a reminder of when my family traveled.

REWARD PROGRAMS

8. Loyalty reward programs through either the airline, the credit card company, or a vacation rewards program can offer you free travel or free nights after you’ve accumulated a specified number of points. All reward cards don’t have to be credit cards if you steer clear of them, however, credit cards often offer generous sign-up bonuses. Many start you out at 25,000 points just for signing up and spending $1000-$2000 in your first three months. Using rewards credit cards takes discipline and organization but they are worth it. The Points Guy is a wonderful resource to learn how to maximize points and rewards.

MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS BENEFITS

9. Membership companies such as AAA or Costco also have travel programs where there are deep discounts or special membership pricing. It’s an added benefit of membership that many people overlook and rarely utilize.

AFFILIATIONS

10. Last but not least, a professional affiliation can afford a discount on certain travel. Firefighters, teachers, military, government, EMS workers have access to deals that they may not even know about. That access extends to spouses as well. Military personnel, whether retired, veteran, active, or reservist can get discount travel through the military’s own travel services or they can ask a travel vendor if they offer discounts. Most hotels do.

All in all, implementing these 10 tips for getting away with great family travel deals allows us to pay less so that we can travel more. And traveling together more often is the best deal of all.

Mar 03 2011

Travel Tip Thursday: Travel and your health

I am so happy that I read. Don’t laugh – it’s true. I’ve committed to designating Thursdays around here, “Travel Tip Thursday”. Naturally, I immediately had writer’s block and could not figure out for the life of me what would be my travel tip for the week.

After reading an article on yahoo, I figured it out. This medically informative article had a very useful travel tip in its paragraphs. The article discussed pulmonary embolisms and it really hit home for me personally.

When my mother was in the hospital several years ago from an accident where she was struck by a van, she experienced one of these. She had surgery on her leg, which already suffered from vericose veins. While sitting in the bed, a blood clot traveled up her leg and into her chest. Thank goodness she was in the hospital and could be treated immediately.

Unfortunately, my favorite aunt (my mom’s only sister) wasn’t so lucky. A few years ago, she had a cancerous “spot” removed from her lungs. Two weeks after her operation, after waking up, she started experiencing shortness of breath and couldn’t breathe. By the time the ambulance got to her, she was already unconscious. The embolism had traveled through her lungs. She died in the hospital not long after the episode began.

One thing that I’ve learned from my personal experiences and from stories of others is that surgery doesn’t always resolve the problem. When we continue with our regular activities, after our so-called recovery, we have to make slight adjustments to adapt to our new selves. Full recovery might take longer than the doctor estimates or than anyone expects.

Nowadays, when my mother travels the 3.5 hours to see me, she can’t make the trip in a straight shot. Besides having to stop for several bathroom breaks, she has to get out and stretch her legs. This helps to keep the blood flowing properly and efficiently through her legs and body.

The following travel tip is applicable to anyone but is specifically geared towards those traveling who have recently undergone surgery or suffered injury or trauma in the legs.

Thursday Travel Tip: Take a break every two hours whether you are riding or flying to stretch and re-energize your legs. Walking around and stretching, and even implementing massage, can regulate blood flow and help avoid clots.

Of course, it’s best to inform your physician of your travel plans if you’ve recently undergone any surgery as they can offer you specific and sound medical advice. The harmless advice/tip that I can offer is to take your time. I know that I need to follow my own advice at times as well, even in the heat of my excitement. As they say, traveling isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey.

You can read the Yahoo article here.

Feb 27 2011

Vacation Home Rentals vs. Hotels

After a stressful birthday week with sick kids, I had the pleasure of enjoying a spur of the moment getaway with my family. We stayed in a vacation home on a quiet inlet in Ocean City, MD. Normally, we book hotels when we travel – partially out of habit but mainly due to convenience. Whenever I’ve considered vacation homes, I thought about the fact that I probably wouldn’t be getting a break from the chores I face in my own house – making beds, cleaning dishes, straightening up. And that’s certainly not a vacation for me.

However, since our accommodations were provided by incrediblebeachvacations.com, I couldn’t turn down the chance to try one on for size. I couldn’t have had a more relaxing time.

Bungalow Review
The vacation rental, named Islamorada, is a tranquil space decorated like a beach home with its fair share of blues, greens, and whites. My husband and oldest son fell in love with the space immediately. Daddy liked being out on the water and junior couldn’t resist the loft’s pinball machine. My toddler and I, are always the harder sell. However, as the day wore on and I assimilated my linens and creature comforts around the bungalow, we both loosened up and relaxed.

Islamorada is a decent sized space with enough room for two families. The house measures at 1424 square feet with two master bedrooms on the first floor, wi-fi, vaulted ceilings, a great room, a family sofa and a queen pullout sofa, three twin trunk beds in the loft, galley kitchen, and a spacious back deck. Here are some pictures:

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Lighting in the dining room and the loft area is a little challenging if you’re looking to do any work but it’s perfect for setting a romantic mood. For a brief moment, it took a little bit of an adjustment to travel with my own linens and paper products but once I made up the bed and stacked my towels, I realized that a vacation home is a better choice for me and my OCD.

Overall
If families are planning to stay somewhere for a week or longer, vacation home rentals are an economical choice. As a home away from home, mom may not get a break from fixing beds and straightening up bathrooms. However, she will get a break from the expense of eating out for every meal and the money saved can be used for a day of massages or a mom-only vacation. No bed-making allowed.

To see other vacation rental properties, check out www.incrediblebeachvacations.com.

Feb 02 2011

Travel Instructions for Daddy

In my beloved aunts words: “It’s always good to write everything down”. And as a result of this wonderful advice, my husband survived my 3-day getaway in one piece. In my previous post, I spoke about a solo trip I was taking. Remember I mentioned how busy I’d be, in an almost neurotic state writing everything down for my husband?

Well, I more accurately coined my detailed Daddy-To-Do-List, the “Daddy Action Plan” or DAP for our fellow government/military employees who like acronyms. And just like clockwork, he sucked his teeth at the two-pager sitting on his dresser and said to my three year old, “Mommy acts like daddy doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’m a pro at this.” Uh-huh.

Ironically, the DAP was greeting me in the car seat when he picked me up from the airport. I couldn’t help but smile.

So, here’s what my DAP looks like when I go away. Feel free to use the template for your own getaway.

INSTRUCTIONS

[Insert Your Child’s name here]

School by 8:15. Gym today, put change of clothes in book bag.
Go over spelling words one last time before class. Double check homework is done correctly before breakfast.
Breakfast: Juice, Cereal, Fruit, Vitamins
Pack Lunch: fruit snack, baby carrots, taco minis, baggie of chips
School pick up is 3:00 pm. Come home and change clothes
3:30 pm – Snack and schoolwork
Sign reading book and other school papers in folder
Look over any unfinished school papers and have him finish
Work with him on incorrect answers on school work
Check kitchen board for school schedule to see if any tests the next day. If so, prepare.
4:30 pm Open Play

[Insert Toddler’s name here]

Breakfast right after dropping off Child#1 – Hot cereal, Juice (To make hot cereal, 1 cup almond milk, ¼ c cereal. Let almond milk heat, then add cereal in. Watch that it doesn’t boil over. Add a couple sprinkles of nutmeg and cinnamon. Let it cook down to a more solid consistency. You can go upstairs and wash his face, brush his teeth, get him dressed while it cools. Then allow him to feed himself, work with him of course to speed him along if pressed for time. Strap him in.
Clothes – I have them already picked for the week in his closet.
You’ll need to be out the door by 9:15 if you want to get to school on time. If you’re not there by 9:35, you will have to go to the front desk, sign him in, and wait for the teacher to come to the office to pick him up.
School starts at 9:30 am. Drive down to stop sign, make right, drive into parking lot and walk son across the street. Teacher (insert description of teacher here if husband has never met teacher) will be waiting to take him from you. Pickup is at 12:05 pm PROMPT. You will park in the lot, stand in front of the door (you’ll see other parents waiting) and they will bring him out.
12:30-1:00pm Lunch – Give him a snack like almonds, fruit snack, or popcorn to hold him over while you prepare lunch. Ideas: leftovers, carrot sticks, noodles, nuggets, tuna salad. If he’s not showing much interest, don’t force it. Just give him his milk and put him down for his nap until
2:35 pm when you go to pick up Son #1. Sometimes he’ll sleep through it all and sometimes not. If you want him to stay asleep, be quiet and don’t have a conversation with him or play music/movie on the radio/talk on the phone.
Dinner should be started by 5:45 pm at the latest so that they can eat by 6:30.
7:15 pm – Bathtime
8:15 pm – Bedtime for both of them. Then you’re free!

Do you ever leave instructions like this? Or do you let them just figure it out on their own and deal with the consequences later? I’d love to hear your thoughts and compare notes.

I can’t help but chuckle at myself when I read over them. Maybe my sister is slightly on to something when she calls me occasionally controlling. (^^ shrugging shoulder^^) Oh well.

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