Do you ever wonder what happens to your mail when you send it out?  I don’t mean email (although that process continues to baffle me) I mean old-fashioned snail mail.  I read today on Yahoo! News about a piece of snail mail that was not only old-fashioned but it had decided to do a bit of traveling before it got to where it was supposed to be.

93 years of travel.

No one knows exactly where the card has been for the last century, but the Christmas card sent to Ethel Martin of Oberlin was in perfect shape by the time it finally reached her sister-in-law (Ethel herself is deceased). 

That’s the thing about real mail instead of email, it is just, well, tangible.  You can loose it, find it, discover it and enjoy it again and again.  Somewhere I still have a love letter I got when I was in Jr. High from a guy I met at a camp near Big Bear Lake, CA.  Real mail, especially real letters, are something that are to be treasured long after the relationship has ended. 

Do you have any letters that you still treasure today?

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Ok, so you’re traveling.  Congratulations!  Now what do you do?  You know you want to see the ruins of Bath, the town of Shakespeare’s Birth and the Loch Ness monster, but how to make it happen?  Do you strike out on your own or take a local tour company’s trip?  How can you get the most bang for your buck? 

I’ve had many different experiences with taking local tours but most have been very positive.  If you’re naturally independent, it can be fun to try and find your way around alone, but mostly it can end up being frustrating if you’re on any type of a tight schedule.  If you’ve got any sorts of time restrictions, I have found that choosing the right local tours can help you see the things you want while allowing you to still travel independently. 

Of course, the trick comes in choosing your own local tour company.  When you’re in Los Angeles, there are thousands of street hawkers offering tours of the ‘Star’s Homes.’  Which one to choose?  I always look for the following:  Inclusion of admission to the site in your tour price.  Knowledgeable and interesting guide.  Reputation (look for fliers with listings of their tours in other cities) and stability as a company.  Good transportation (find a fun-looking bus, but be wary of the boat-looking busses!).

If your tour company includes the admission fees to sites and the transportation fees it is frequently less expensive to use a local tour than to arrange transportation and entrance fees yourself.  They can include both because they buy admission in bulk from locations for their customers so they get a discount (not that they’ll tell you this) and therefore they’re still making money.  Plus, if you get a good guide you can get some free sight seeing and information in that you wouldn’t have gotten in otherwise.

Also, there are several sites that you can check out before you go for great reviews on tour companies.  Kango.com has a whole ‘what to do’ section that is immensely helpful.  Viator.com will actually book your tours ahead of time for you.  Lonely Planet.com has reviews from other travelers.   

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I love cotton.  It is perhaps my favorite type of material- all purpose, comfortable, natural, renewable.  Unfortunately it is also very prone to getting wrinkles.  Unless you get one of these non-organic non-wrinkle blends of cotton (which I’m trying to get away from, but desperately love!) you are bound to end up with wrinkles of some kind.  So when it comes to packing, this becomes an even bigger problem.  There are generally two ways to go, once again the T (my husband) way or the Suz way.  

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We’re all procrastinators.  Noone who voted in last week’s poll packs any time before the night before!  Hehehehe… my kind of people.  New poll comming next week.

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Ok, so flights are one of the biggest parts of any travel budget.  It doesn’t matter how much you can skimp on your room and board if you can’t get to where you’re going in the first place.  So here is how I get cheap airfare when I need (read: WANT!) to go abroad:

10. Shop around. Use the internet, call travel agents and call airlines themselves to check prices.  Frequently one might have access to a better fair than another.

9.  Flex your days. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays are the cheaper days to fly anywhere because business travelers and weekenders aren’t flying them.  All airlines and travel agents can check these dates for you and now many search engines can as well.

8.  Fly location specific airlines.  Air Lingus frequently has the cheapest flights to Ireland, but not to Saskatchewan.  Which makes sense. 

7.  If you’re flying within a country or region find out what airline the locals fly.  Many times these airlines don’t list their flights anywhere but their own websites, for instance if you’re flying in the western part of the United States, Southwest Airlines is a very cheap way to fly but you’d never know that they existed checking Travelocity or other airlines. More »