Death By Selfie: The Dangers of Taking Too Many Selfies While Traveling
Posted on 09/24/2015, 11:45 AM
With every technological advance, there’s also a step backward…and sometimes that step can be a fatal one, in the case of selfies. The modern smartphone, with its ability to not only act as a communication device but also as a camera (and one with a lens on both sides) is changing the way we experience travel, and it's leaving some travelers hurt, and even dead. That isn’t hyperbole. In j...
Two Little-Known Upstarts—WOW Airlines of Iceland and Norwegian Air of Scandinavia—Are Currently Offering Bargain Rates for Off-Season Crossings of the Atlantic
Posted on 09/18/2015, 4:30 PM
We are about to reach the slowest days of the European off-season, which starts as we approach the month of November and continues until mid-March. It is then that European hotels search for guests, the cost of vacationing in Europe declines, and the smartest of all American travelers choose to cross the Atlantic. But though the land costs of Europe are less at that time, e...
Meteorologists Predict Changing Weather Will Make This Year's Fall Foliage Different
Posted on 09/16/2015, 1:00 PM
First the bad news: leaf-peeping along North America’s eastern seaboard, and in the inland areas of New England, may not be quite as vivid an event as it usually is in 2015. Yankee magazine, which keeps a meteorologist on staff to make such predictions, is just one of the many voices predicting less color. “It’s going to be a little bit of a mix this year because we had one of the fierces...
Driver Licences From Four U.S. States May No Longer Be Accepted As I.D. at Airports in 2016
Posted on 09/14/2015, 7:45 PM
And those states are: New York, New Hampshire, Louisiana, and Minnesota. In December of 2014, the first phase of the Real ID Act from Congress and the Department of Homeland Security went into effect. It's mandate was to standardize government-issued IDs across the United States, specifically for the purpose of allowing people entry to Federal facilities. The states would have until 2016 t...
As Travel Destinations Jockey for Position, It Becomes Necessary Periodically to Revise Our List of 10 Favorites
Posted on 09/10/2015, 9:45 PM
Which, currently, are the ten-or-so most-promising destinations for your own next vacation? Though any such list is unusually subjective (to put it mildly), I'm willing to give the selection a try. Here they are, in no particular order: (1) Colonial Williamsburg, in Williamsburg, Virginia: This re-created state capital of the 1700s is like an historical Disney World, ...
Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia, Comes Close to Being an Indispensable Place to Visit for Americans of All Ages
Posted on 09/10/2015, 7:45 PM
Travel is a constant process of self-education. As we visit more and more destinations, we adopt new favorites, replace former cities and resorts with new and more pleasant ones. I've been surprised to enjoy recent vacations at places I had never before considered, beginning with America's most historic experience, in the State of Virginia: Colonial Williamsburg: When m...
A New App Promises to Make Travel More Safe for Solo Vacationers
Posted on 09/09/2015, 2:15 PM
Men and women travel differently. And that’s not a comment on shopping habits or boozy pub crawls. For women, especially solo travelers, safety is always front of mind, a concern that can influence the destinations we pick, the routes we take and the activities we participate in. Because of that, I’ve always been a bit jealous of the carefree male travelers I see, men who seem to j...
International Airfare Wars Make It Much Cheaper to Vacation Abroad This Fall and Winter
Posted on 08/31/2015, 4:15 PM
I reported roughly a week ago that airfares for the summer took a sharp dip; and that experts were predicting that fall fares would also be low. Sometimes it's sweet to be right. My Facebook page has been lighting up with posts from friends who have just gotten steals (one recently got a round-trip Chicago-Miami itinerary for $106 TOTAL) and we're now seeing a lot of fare sales to all parts...
Advance Reading is the Key to a Successful International Trip; Failure to Prepare via Reading is to Virtually Guarantee Disappointment
Posted on 08/28/2015, 2:00 PM
If you arrive overseas without any foreknowledge of the history, culture or politics of the country you are visiting, you are bound to have the most superficial experience. You are relegated to the dull explanations of commercial tour operators whose spiels, aboard forty-person motorcoaches, can't possibly capture the colorful story and current posture of every foreign country. Y...
In Addition to Sampling the Cultural Riches of Europe, The Smart Tourist Will Cast An Eye at The Fairly Uniform Social Legislation Adopted by Nearly Every Country on the Continent
Posted on 08/27/2015, 9:45 PM
The overwhelming number of tourists to Western Europe go there with cultural visits in mind. For Europe itself is like a vast, open-air museum--a treasure house, first, of art, music, drama, dance, literature, science, philosophy and architecture--whose many museums, theaters, historic homes, structures and schools, are alone a reason to visit. But many also go to Europe for reasons t...