Monthly Archives: April 2011

Didn't Get an Invite? Then Take a Royal Wedding Walking Tour

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If you’re a big fan of Kate and William, but couldn’t make it over in time for the nuptials, make a stop over in London this summer for the Royal Wedding walking tour.

You’ll see where the couple ate, danced, broke up and attended other royal get-togethers.

The walking tour is given by Celebrity Planet, which also offers a Princess Diana memorial tour, a Harry Potter tour, Notting Hill/Portobello Road tours, a Jack the Ripper walk and a Beatles London tour, among others.

Don’t want to pay for a tour out of your student traveller budget? Then make your own map. Many of the Royal Wedding locations are listed on the Celebrity Planet website, and there are many sites that list Harry Potter locations in London.

Grab a map and a highlighter and you can plot your own day around London, at your pace. You’ll miss out on the color commentary though, which can be part of the fun if you have a good guide.

Know of any other good walks in London?

Get a Reading List for Your Destination

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A perfect read for Peru.

When I start planning a trip one of the first things I do is collect information about my destination.

I bookmark websites about things I want to see and do there, I go through my stack of National Geographic Traveller magazines and look for relevant articles, and I try to find a book or two that will help me learn about the culture and history of this new place.

(Ok, I don’t go that far if I’m spending a weekend in Vancouver or a few days in Vegas, but for my first trip to South America you better believe I want to be prepared.)

If you aren’t thrilled about doing time in the library to find the right reading material, no worries. Lonely Planet has done the work for you and put together reading lists for about 100 different countries.

Whether you’re going to Botswana, Brazil or Bhutan, they have recommendations for great travel reading, so I’m off to do some book shopping.

What travel books did you love reading before a trip?

Lonely Planet Hearts GAP Adventures

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There goes my GAP Adventures tour!

With just about two weeks to go until I fly off to Lima, Peru, I’m reading everything I can about the places I’m going to see.

I was going through LonelyPlanet.com’s Inca Trail essentials, and one of their tips is:

“Choose your trekking agency carefully. Shop around and ask lots of questions: what you?ll have to carry, how many people to a tent, how many porters for the group, if there are arrangements for special diets. It?s worth paying more for a reputable agency that treats its porters well and respects the environment.”

They go on to recommend exactly one tour operator: Gap Adventures. That just happens to be the company I selected after a lot of comparison shopping, and I feel really good about my choice.

Gap Adventures has been around since 1990 and now offers tours on all 7 continents. Around 100,000 travellers a year go somewhere with Gap, and you don’t get that kind of business if you aren’t doing a lot of things right.

So how can you pick the right tour operator for you?

If sustainable travel is something you value, visit a company’s website to see how they operate, how they give back to the local communities they travel through, and what experiences other travellers have had with them.

If you’re planning a trip just based on your budget, you can probably always find a company that can do something cheaper, but you have to consider how they’re saving that money. Are they paying unfair wages to the locals they hire? Are they putting you on unsafe buses or making you stay in unclean hotels?

Sometimes saving $50 or $100 upfront can wind up costing you far more later in last-minute plans that you have to make because your tour operator didn’t take care of it for you.

Travel is more fun than school, but you still have to do your homework to get the most out of it.

What tours have you been on and loved?

Getting Shot and Drugged for Peru

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Know before you go! Check the Public Health site to find out what you need to stay healthy on your travels.

You know what’s nice about England? Or France? Or Australia? If you wanted to, you could wake up in the morning and say, “I think I’ll get on a plane and go somewhere today.”

And you could fly to any of those places, just as long as you had a passport and lots of money for a last-minute ticket and didn’t have to worry about missing work or school. So, really, almost none of us could do that, but you get the idea. It’s possible.

But I’m not going to any of those places this time. I’m going to Peru. (Woo hoo!) And the thing with Peru, and other destinations in South America or Africa or Asia, is that you need to plan in advance so that you can get all of your fun shots and pills taken care of.

So, first I called in to ask about travel shots. Once the nurse knew where I was going she was able to determine what vaccinations and medications I would need.

To start with, I got shots for Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B. And yes, they hurt. And no, I did not even get a lollipop. They also took some blood to make sure I was already immune to measles, mumps, rubella and some other tasty-sounding diseases.

Next, I was given typhoid pills. You take these before your trip so they have time to really get into your system and do whatever it is they do to prevent typhoid. I didn’t notice any side effects, except for one really weird dream where I was being chased by a pterodactyl at a Flight of the Conchords concert. That may not have been entirely pill related though.

After my blood test came back and said I had all the normal immunities, I went back in and got my vaccination for yellow fever. This one is important because some countries won’t let you in unless you can show proof that you’ve had this shot. It would be crazy to fly 12+ hours, just to have to turn around and go home because you didn’t get a shot – and nobody else is going to ask or tell you to get it – so when in doubt, look up if you need one.

This shot stung more than the other two, and I still did not get a lollipop, or even a cute Band-Aid.

Finally, I was given malaria pills that I have to start taking two days before I go into the Amazon jungles, and pills for altitude sickness and traveller’s diarrhea, which are to be used as needed.

I really hope I don’t need them.

To find out what you need to do to stay healthy on your travels, visit the Public Health Agency of Canada or the American Center for Disease Control.

This trip is proving to be more complicated than any trip I’ve taken in the past, but I think the sights and experiences will just be that much more rewarding.

Saludos!
Lisa

Read a Newspaper & Feel Like a Local

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When planning a trip you’ll certainly surf the web a bit. You should check in with National Geographic, check out some forums where you can talk to other travelers and get advice, and talking with an experienced travel agent is a good idea as well.

Whats hot in the Southern Hemisphere? Check out the New Zealand Herald to find out what people from Auckland to Dunedin are talking about.

Another simple thing to do is to find the local newspaper for your destination online and read up on what’s going on there. It’s an easy way to get weather reports, find out about local festivals or events you may want to attend, or just to get a feel for what the people there are talking about.

It’s much easier to strike up a conversation with locals when you’re able to ask them about a recent concert, important court case, big sporting event, or just something funny you saw (“What’s the deal with that surfing poodle?”).

Here are some of the best sources for news in other parts of the world:

Pack Smart for Long and Short Trips

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Her bag isn't bigger on the inside. It just seems that way.

When it comes to packing your clothes, how do you roll?

Lengthwise, top to bottom, one pant leg at a time?

A recent New York Times article gave tips from flight attendant Heather Poole on how she packs enough into her carry-on bag to last 10 days. Who would know more about packing than someone who flies for a living, right?

Her main tip is to roll clothes, don’t fold them. I started rolling my clothes a few years ago, after seeing the tip on “Oprah” (What? She can be helpful sometimes.) and it’s served me well across Europe and Australia.

Rolling reduces wrinkles, makes the most of your space, and whenever I pick up a fragile souvenir, I find putting it in between my rolled clothes gives it good protection for the journey home.

This bag might actually be bigger on the inside.

Other things you might want to try when packing (based on my own trial and error):

1. Put your socks, underwear, gloves and other small clothing items into big zip bags. If you have to find clothes in a hostel, in the dark, it will be easier to reach in your bag and find one big plastic bag than to hunt for two matching socks that have gone their separate ways.

2. Pack a couple of empty plastic bags when you begin and use them for dirty laundry or wet towels as you go. It will keep your clean clothes from being tainted by travel grime and when you have time to do laundry, you just have to grab the “dirty” bag and go.

3. Plan mix-and-match outfits. No matter how cute that one top is, if it only goes with that one skirt and one pair of shoes, forget it. If you can bring maybe five tops and three bottoms that all work together, you can layer and swap items so that you aren’t always wearing the exact same thing, but aren’t lugging around your full closet either.

4. Keep your itinerary in mind. If you’re hitting London, Paris and Barcelona just to party, then bring the club clothes, the big makeup bag, the curling iron, the cute heels and whatever else you need to have a good time. But if your plan is to hike and camp for 90% of your trip, with just a few nights out, then leave them at home. Anything you might only use once or twice isn’t worth its weight in your bag.

What are your best packing tips?

Lisa

When in Arkansas, Shop Like an Arkansan

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Arkansas probably wouldn’t break my top 100 places to visit. Not that it’s a terrible place, it’s just not somewhere I ever imagined myself spending time.

But last week I had the chance to take a free trip to Arkansas for business, and I just can’t say no to free frequent flier miles, so off I went.

Unlike most of my travel destinations, there were no big museums, famous concert halls, large monuments or other well-known sights to see. So instead I looked at this trip as a chance to try some typical Southern experiences. That meant eating a lot of really good barbeque, and shopping at a really big Walmart.

When I grocery shopped in New Zealand I learned that they’re a lot more creative with their tuna than we are. When I shopped at an Arkansas Walmart Supercenter, I learned that people there have very diverse but intense needs for barbeque sauce:

They also enjoy their cheese puff ball things:

But they also have some decent choices in fresh produce, which surprised me:

And while most of what I saw looked like a big strip mall, the Bentonville town square, where you can visit the free Walmart museum (woo hoo!) is  kinda nice:

The lesson here is that you don’t have to run off to Europe to feel like you’ve really travelled. You just have to go somewhere new to you, and learn a little about what life is like for the people who live there.

And if you get a few thousand frequent flier miles out of the deal, even better.

Save money, travel better,
Lisa

Sightseeing Must: Subway Stations

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The Dome of Light in Formosa Boulevard station, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Photo by

The Matador Network is a great collection of travel stories and resources, and I love when it points me to collections like this one:

Art in Subway Stations Around the World

I’ve written before that I think travel should include not just the big sights, but the everyday sights, too.

So along with the Louvre and the Sydney Opera House, you should also visit a McDonald’s or a laundromat or a neighborhood market. That’s how you get a feel for how the locals live and what their tastes are.

And in this case, you also get to see how some cities create art for everyone. You don’t have to be rich to see these creative works. You just have to wander into a subway station.

And now, I really need to get to the Place-Des-Arts metro station in Montreal.

What’s your favorite train or subway station?

Lisa

Best April Fool's Day Travel Pranks

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For April Fool’s today, sniqueaway.com (no, the spelling of the name isn’t part of the joke – it’s just an embarrassing misuse of letters) is offering a great deal at Con Nuri Eleganza, where you get hourly double rainbows:

Unicorn rentals can be reserved remotely via a really strong wish.

This resort features a miniature Loch Ness monster, unicorn rentals, a bathroom mirror that shows you as you looked in 1996, fairy masseuses, a Jell-O moat and monkey butlers.

The description is over-the-top enough that you know it’s a joke, but it would still be a fun place to visit… in my mind. I’m going there now.

Check out some past travel pranks, like the time WestJet Airlines fooled its passengers by asking them all to help save energy during takeoff by stretching out their arms and flapping. Oh, WestJet.

Have a great weekend!
Lisa