My travel health advisor (the one who injected me with yellow fever so I won’t get it abroad) mentioned a Cool Tool: the State Department registry. You register yourself and any upcoming trips with as much information as you’d like to give. In return, you can sign up for email alerts about travel warnings, and [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Cool Tools’
July 6, 2010
Cool Tools: Mom’s Minivan!
Oh no! It’s summertime and you have to pile the kids into the car for a roadtrip to Grandma’s. And your car doesn’t have a newfangled DVD player anchored to the ceiling! What are you going to do! Or perhaps, you’ve decided your kids have had enough watching of the boob-tube (picture the fat people [...]
June 15, 2010
Cool Tools: Jetsetter.com
So you’re a “budget” traveler like me, which is a euphemistic way of saying we’re cheap. Rather, I’d like to think of it as being “practical” or “reasonable” or, mostly, “not being ripped off”. “Cheap” implies that I would put others in a poor position to save myself a few $ but really, I end [...]
June 10, 2010
Cool Tools: The portable safe!
Guidebooks and people are always warning about valuables on trips. “Make sure you lock them in the hotel safe!” is a popular piece of advice. Well, if you’re a budgety traveler like I am and sometimes stay in places that don’t come with fancy-schmancy safes, then you’re in a bit of a pickle. Fear not, [...]
June 8, 2010
Cool Tools: Airport gyms finder
I’m sure many entrepreneurs have been salivating over this idea: a chain of gyms across airports for those with long layovers or a delayed flight. Easy, right? Rope off an area or lease space in an airport or several spaces in each terminal equipped with machines, weights, locker rooms with space for luggage and a [...]
April 28, 2010
Cool Tools: Miles or buy?
My friend John was debating on Facebook whether he and his partner should spend $200 each on a plane ticket or 12.5K miles for a flight from Chicago to San Francisco. Lots of opinions came in, mostly – “no! spend the money! the miles aren’t worth it unless you’re traveling” overseas, more than five hours, [...]
April 22, 2010
Cool Tools: Hiding your valuables at the beach
Protecting your valuables on the beach is always a tricky deal: you want to bring your Ipod, your phone, your camera, plus your money and keys, but then one of your friends or family has to stay behind to guard everything while everyone else runs off. Or, you just take a deep breath and against [...]
March 21, 2010
Cool Tools: SteriPen water purifier
Nothing can ruin a great trip to an exotic country than consuming some exotic bacteria and setting off what’s more euphemistically referred to as “Montezuma’s Revenge”. You can soak your hands in Purell all your want and run all your silverware under rubbing alcohol, but even brushing your teeth with tap water or eating fruit [...]
March 9, 2010
Cool Tools: Tripadvisor!
One of my favorite travel tools of all time (though taken with a grain of salt): TripAdvisor.com. I’ve been on there multiple times while researching several trips for people who wrote requesting help with travel planning. Talk about an open forum! People go on there all the time to rant or rave about a hotel [...]
February 24, 2010
Cool Tools: The Bathroom Diaries
The Bathroom Diaries (www.thebathroomdiaries.com) is really more amusing than useful, because I don’t know if it will really be reliable when nature calls and you don’t have a phone or computer with you in whatever part of the world to reference the site. It lists and rates nearly 9,000 bathrooms throughout the US and 3,000 [...]
