NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) - When it comes to holiday travel, flexibility will always be the key to getting the best rates and maintaining your sanity.

Travel off-peak to pay less and avoid the crowds. For example, everyone wants to travel the Wednesday before and the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Consider taking an extra day off on either end to get a better deal on your flight and avoid congestion on the roads and at the airport.

Another way to beat holiday travel stress is to create unique traditions. The calendar says Christmas is December 25th, but talk with your family and see if everyone can agree to celebrate the holiday on an alternate date, perhaps the weekend before or after. Flying family members could save a bundle, and the driving crowd will avoid highway crunch time.

Keep in mind that flights usually cost less if you travel on the actual holidays: Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Years Eve.

If you're lucky to have friends or relatives overseas, embrace opportunities to make international memories. Maybe a student is studying abroad, or a business executive is on temporary assignment. Take advantage of this alternate home base and make it this year's "home for the holidays." It will probably require more work and expense than driving over the river and through the woods, but you won't regret it!

If you do plan to leave New Orleans for a foreign land, check your credit cards. Not only to confirm your credit limits, but also to be sure that the physical cards are chip-enabled. Many overseas ATMs require microchips that your cards may not have if you haven't received a new one lately.

Call for a replacement card well in advance of your trip, and while you're at it, ask about international fees. Some companies offer a "travel card" option with no international transaction fees, but these can take four to six weeks to arrive, so check with your credit card companies now, during the planning stages of your journey.

Start the holiday season right by giving yourself the gift of stress-relief when it comes to travel planning.
I'm Stephanie Oswald and I'll see you next time.

Food + Mouth = Survival. Simple math...you'd think.

But the task of feeding yourself can seem like Mission: Impossible once you step off the continent. Language, culture and availability make finding animal-free nosh a massive ordeal that can swallow up a whole afternoon of your hard-earned vacation/travel time. And when your blood sugar starts to dip, after a long bus ride or a day traipsing around some ruins, the difficulty and frustration involved in finding vegetarian food can wreck your day.

Maintaining an alternative food lifestyle while traveling in countries that do not understand or recognize vegetarianism as the moral/ethical/healthful imperative that it is to you, will always be a challenge. But there are ways to make it easier.

After globe-trotting across every continent, 30+ countries, I've developed a few strategies to help keep my lean, mean, vegetarian machine meat-free on the hoof.

Research

Going to Egypt? Friggin' Google "vegetarian Egyptian food!" Of course you could probably eat pizza and french fries for every meal and have a (very dull) vegetarian holiday but the whole point is to sample the local flavour. A little research will go a long way and you won't miss culinary gems like kosheri (Egypt's delicious, and vegetarian, ode to carbohydrates).

Pack your own seasoning

The sad truth is that to stay veggie in certain countries and regions you may end up eating some boring, bland and tasteless food. On a three month trip to South America my diet mostly consisted of boiled rice, over-fried eggs and a dusting of limp vegetables. Do yourself a favour and make sure you have some salt and pepper stashed in your bag, hot sauce or spices can also help relieve the ennui of repetition.

Self-cater

Hunting for a decent place to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day is stressful. Is the kitchen clean? Is there anything on the menu I can order? Take the guesswork and anxiety out of eating by hitting a local market. A decent veggie picnic can be cobbled together in this way, and usually for a lot cheaper than eating at a restaurant. Make sure to pack a Swiss Army knife for slicing fruit and veg, and (most importantly) opening bottles of wine.

Bring an arsenal of vitamins

To keep your veggie faith burning bright while traveling, you'll most likely be eating a limited and repetitive diet (cheese sandwiches again? Yay). As a result it's possible you could become deficient in some vitamins and nutrients that you'd get from your normal, varied, vegetarian diet. Taking a multivitamin and an iron supplement while you travel can fill in the nutritional gaps, and also help you avoid the fatigue that is associated with some vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Because really, being tired when you're on vacation is a drag.

Accept

OK, I'm a veggie, you're a veggie, but most of the world gets down with meat products. Food is history, it's culture. In short it embodies many of the reasons we travel in the first place. And for that reason I propose that once in a while it's OK to stray from the vegetarian path. It's OK to nibble blood sausage fresh from a market stall in rural France, slurp authentic pho in Vietnam or taste Argentina's famous beef. It's more than just food, it's identity.

It's also a good idea to keep some snacks on you at all times, in case you get stranded in a locale where the food options are limited. Keeping yourself fed and healthy while you're traveling is more important than it is at home. Thieves and scammers are always on the lookout for people who are vulnerable. And when your blood sugar is in the toilet, your decision making is not at its best. You think the bad guys don't notice but it's their job to notice, and they'll take advantage of your food deprived, shadow-of-a-self and con you.

So, when gearing up for your next international adventure (or your first one) get planning, get packing and get real, because the richness that travel adds to your life and to your soul is well worth a little fish sauce entering your temple.

Happy (healthy) travels.

When parents tell me they're going to Europe and ask me where to take their kids, I'm sometimes tempted to answer, "To Grandma and Grandpa's on your way to the airport." It's easy to make the case against taking the kids along. A European vacation with kids in tow is much more about playgrounds and petting zoos than about museums and churches. And traveling with kids can be expensive. Out of exhaustion and frustration, you may opt for pricey conveniences like taxis and any restaurant with a child-friendly menu. Two adults with kids can end up spending twice as much to experience about half the magic of Europe. But traveling with kids, you'll live more like Europeans and less like tourists. Your children are like ambassadors, opening doors to new experiences and countless conversations. With kids, you'll be forced to discard your tourist armor and become a temporary European - as a parent. Some of my best travel memories wouldn't have happened without my kids. Because my son was in the car, I once detoured to watch a "Petit League" baseball tournament in southern France - and debated ball and strike calls behind home plate with a pan-European bunch of parents. I'm no horseman, but because my daughter had her heart set on it, I've trotted along leafy bridle paths in the Cotswolds (next time I'll wear long pants). Let the kid in you set the itinerary, and everyone will have a good time. Somehow even the big-ticket family attractions - the kind I normally avoid - have more appeal in Europe. Europe's Disneyland, outside Paris, has all the familiar rides and characters. But Mickey Mouse speaks French, and you can buy wine with your lunch. My kids went ducky for it. With upward of 15 million visitors a year, Disneyland Paris has become the Continent's single leading tourist destination.

Source:
http://www.corlissgroup.com/voyage.html?tid=00235

Discovery of the Americas

Det første segmentet gir deg mulighet for cruising Panama-kanalen og mange nye porter med samtaler underveis. På denne spennende segment vil du ha mulighet for å fly til Galapagos øyene, som er hjemmet til den fantastiske fugler, skilpadder og Sea Life finner du bare i dette området av verden.

Planlegge luksus reiser i dag på http://www.corlissgroup.com/contact.html