Travel Tips

Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel is apparently a magazine and Budget invited me to subscribe. In the invite, they also threw in a brochure on "25 travel tips that save you money and change your travel life for the better." Here are some of them, edited and amended by me.

Want to take your golf clubs, skis, tennis bag to your destination? Don't use a company that specializes in shipping, go to FedEx or UPS on your own. Budget says you'll save as much as 50 per cent.

Try Costco for discount tickets to Disneyland, et al.

Tour operators that offer air fare and cruise ships or tours use charter plane companies, such as Vacation Express, Funjet or Apple. If the charter plane isn't full, they'll gladly accept you and they don't charge as much as the bigger airlines. To see if it's true, I went to the Funjet site and was told in small print that they'd picked a Jet Blue flight for me and then proceeded to list a bunch of Las Vegas hotels. kayak.com is a better bet.

If you've got an early morning flight, look into the Park and Fly packages offered by hotels near the airport. A lot of hotels include free parking for the days you'll be gone and in the end, it will be cheaper than an airport parking lot.

Always rent the cheapest car the agency offers. If they run out of them, they'll be forced to upgrade you for free. But: if they've got plenty of them, you're stuck with the cheapy.

When you do get a rental car, walk all the way around it and if you spot anything amiss, take a picture of it in case you get charged with having cause the ding or whatever. I'd add take a look at the interior, too. Missing floor mat, ripped upholstery. We had to resort to this in Cabo when the local Avis guy tried to hit us up for a 3,000 peso dent that we didn't do. He also offered to forget all about it for $100 under the table. Happily we had the proof. What a weasel.

At some car agencies (Hertz) the agent walks around the vehicle with you and makes notes on a double pad about any damage and gives you a copy of the report then and there.

Keep your vacation photos on a back-up flash drive. At your destination, buy a key ring with a tag that will identify the place -- one with an Eiffel Tower, or the nested Russian dolls, Aloha from Hawaii --and when you get home and store them, you can easily find the one you want.

Make a color copy of your pertinent passport information and store it in your suitcase. Newer passports come with a small tag with your passport number on it to store in your billfold.

I'd add that Richie always takes a sheet of paper, writes our names and home address and cell phone number plus all of our flights with dates and times. If your bag goes astray, whoever handles it will know where it should go. next.

If you're flying to any destination in Europe, it makes sense to fly into London and then use a regional airline like Ryanair, Easyjet or Wizz. It's cheaper.

As Roy Rogers would tell you -- "Happy trails to yew...."