As a collective group, if each tourist had a dollar for every time they said “Damn, I wish I knew … ” while abroad, my guess is they’d challenge a lottery jackpot. Oprah would likely call this your ‘Aha!’ moment. Unfortunately, ‘Aha!’ moments, after the fact, in the air or overseas are not very helpful.
We here at JohnnyJet.com understand that you can never have too many insider travel tips and so we urge you to share your favorite, most useful one.
What: The contestant with the best tip as decided by our team will receive our traveler’s edition of the “Convenience 101″ package, valued at $150 USD.
1. Trace Me Luggage Tracker: This provides travelers with a strong, durable, Airline checkable tag for your luggage that has a unique serial number and 2D bar code and can always be identified and returned to you. Just register your TRACE ME serial number at www.immobilise.com and your luggage will be accounted for at all times.
2. Homeopathic Jet Lag Prevention: The brand “No Jet Lag” is a safe, natural and effective homeopathic remedy. It’s truly the perfect travel companion. The 32 tablets, which are sufficient for 50 hours of flying, offer a convenient solution in alleving the woes of exhaustion induced jet lag. It controls fatigue, disorientation, lack of concentration or motivation, dehydration and discomfort in the legs and feet. It’s effectiveness has been proven scientifically and is recognized internationally by business and pleasure travelers as well as professional athletes/teams, celebrities, flight crews, and military personnel.
3. Virgin Atlantic Sleep Suit: This medium-sized, upper-class sleep suit from Virgin Atlantic comes in a black bag with a silverish embroider design. Put this comfortable, jersey- like suit on and you’ll be able to pass out on an overnight flight, with a middle seat in business class.
4. Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations Collection 6 Parts 1 & 2: On the Travel Channel’s most popular Emmy-winning series, Bourdain continues to explore every corner of the globe and encounters the wild and outrageous personalities that defines the international cultural landscape through their cuisines. The food is only the surface of a deeper look into how people live their lives in faraway lands. From Istanbul to Madrid to Pakistan and Dubai, this two part set will leave you both hungry and and motivated to travel the globe for yourself. And when you do, you’ll have these DVDs to pass time on the plane.
How: It’s this simple. Write your favorite travel tip in the comment section below. Include your name, an email address as well. All official contest rules apply.
When: The winner of the “Convenience 101” travel package will be announced next Wednesday, June 20th and be contacted by a JohnnyJet.com representative. The last day/time to enter will be on Monday, June 18th 6pm PST.
Why: Here’s to easy and hassle-free adventures and keeping travel-related aha moments to a minimum. Take that Oprah.
I have had my perfume taken from me on soooo many trips because the bottle is too big … well finally found a small “travel” pefume sprayer that if specifically for our special scents … it can be purchased at any drug store for under ten dollars … you just take the sprayer off connect it to your bottle and push to fill!!!! No more losing my expensive perfume before flights!!!
When I travel I always just take a carry on bag…..I never check my luggage. One of the things I do is pack underware and sox that I no longer love. If I go on a 10 day trip, I take 10 of each, 7 day trip, 7 of each and so on. After wearing the sox/underware one day, I throw them out. At the end of my trip, I usually have room for a few souviners in my carry on bag and no dirty sox/undies to wash when I get home!
When traveling with children, pack complete outfits (include underwear & socks) for them in gallon zip top bags. They are able to pick out a ‘bag’ of clothes for the day/occasion (keeping them happy by giving them a choice), you are able to rest easy knowing that on your final day ‘Jenny’ won’t be wearing orange striped shorts with a purple checked shirt.
Keep the bags to re-use next trip.
btw, Linda, save the $10. You can simply go to Sephora and they are more than happy to give you (generous!) samples of whatever scents you’d like (to take with you on your trip).
You bought it, but how are you getting it home? 1) You can ship it and it will still be cheaper than an extra piece of luggage, and it may beat you home (get help from the merchant, concierge or a relative). 2) You can bring a small nylon duffle for carry on, but you stuff dirty clothes in it and the new purchase goes in the normal luggage (you can’t break dirty clothes; bring extra luggage tags). 3) Thanks to companies such as Scott eVest your can bring a jacket with tons of pockets and carry it on board without incurring additional carry on charges.
Have an old iPod touch and have no use for it now that you upgraded to an iPhone or an iPad? Download “Find My iPhone” app and set it up on your old device. Place it in your main bag and if your bag ever gets lost or stolen you’ll be able to locate it!
I was given this piece of advice once- When traveling with small children that have potential to annoy fellow passengers on a plane ride… Bring a couple of $5 Starbucks gift cards and give them before you take off to immediate neighboring seats (if you want to preempt and encourage the passengers to be tolerant during flight,) or after the flight is over to simply say ‘thank you!’ for being so patient with your excited little travelers. :).
Wear layers! It saves in packing because you can wear the outer layer multiple times. Thinner, lighter inner layers fit into the carry on better. It’s also nice to have layers because you can never tell if a plane/boat/train will be very cold or very hot.
This is more for road trips, but after covering the US a few times and multiple 12-18 hour “short” trips I’ve found having a bottle of spray refresher does wonders. I bought one at Sally’s Beauty for around $5 that smelled subtly like coconut and I believe it was sold as an after sun spray. It made skin and hair look better before going anywhere in public. I also found having two gallon bottles of water and a reusable water bottle saved tons of money. I went through a whole gallon and half of the second while driving from Monterey, CA to Aspen, CO. The desert gets hot and hydration is important.
I use the hotel show caps to cover my shoes in my suitcase and keep them from touching my clean clothes
I found that some hotels in Europe don’t supply washcloths (at least they didn’t several years ago!). Instead of taking up space in your luggage with your own or even disposable face cloths, take along a mesh puff. They dry fast and they scrunch down to practically nothing! You can carry it in a ziplock sandwich bag and you’ll always have it with you no matter where you go. Mine came in handy in Iceland.
Purchase a “Sim Card” when abroad and enable cheap calls within country. Also purchase small quality padlocks for your backpack and carry all valuables within the locked compartments, with no fear of losing them.
Never check in your bag – and invest in a Flight001 SpacePak for your clothes. I’ve been able to squeeze 2 weeks worth of clothes (clean and dirty) into this handy device and toss it into my 19″ Heys XCase, no problem.
My tip is if you use and iPhone:
In contacts create a group for upcoming trips; ie; You can keep contact info for hotels, airline info, hotel bookings, US Embassy etc for each city you are visiting. So when you are traveling, you can only have that group selected, so all needed info is available at a glance!
No need to panic searching through hundreds of contacts when all you will nee are in 1 group! You can have a contact card for each city with excursion contacts, police etc so it is easy to find in a hurry!