Taking off Travel blog

Making the right offsite airport parking choice save not only time but money. Here are some tips for getting the best from off airport parking.

Tips for choosing offsite airport parking

Research The Facilities

Before you even think about booking, check out the airport parking lot online. Is it located close enough to the terminal you will be traveling from? What facilities does it have? Accessibility, the availability of a cell phone lot and other amenities will all make a difference to the overall experience of using the parking lot. Check whether the offsite airport parking provider offers a choice of parking options, plus useful services like turning on the heat or air conditioning before you come back to the car. Read more »

While doing the rounds of some travel blogs, I came across PlanetEye. It aims to be a trip planning service with a difference, incorporating editorial content on destinations with useful information and help with bookings. I decided to put it to the test.

Planet Eye screenshot

Setup And First Steps

Getting set up was easy, but I hit my first snag when trying to create a travel pack for a forthcoming trip to Hollywood, Florida. You get the chance to add destinations, but of the handful of Hollywoods I was offered, I couldn’t tell which one was in Florida. So I created an empty travel pack, and added Florida as my destination, hoping that I would get the chance to specify later. Sure enough, I was able to find my exact destination on the map, but I couldn’t find a way to save it as part of my travel pack. Read more »

Planning my next trip made me reflect on how much the process has changed since I took my first self-planned trip. I was 22 and a group of girls from work were off to Miami for a long weekend. We phoned up a travel agent, booked and paid for our tickets and hoped we’d be allocated a good hotel. While some people still book their trips like that, a lot more now take the guesswork out of it with readily available tools.

A Street’s Eye View

One of the best of these is Google Maps. Used in conjunction with an excellent travel forum or website, it’s a great way to get a street’s eye view of the places you might visit or want to stay. Here’s how we use it. Once we’ve decided on the destination, we start looking for good hotels and local attractions.

Where To Stay?

TripAdvisor is a great resource for quickly finding out what other travelers have enjoyed in a given city and you can use the locations to work out where it might be good to stay. Then it’s over to Hotwire to see if there are any bargain hotels. Once I have a shortlist, then it’s over to Google Maps to see how everything stacks up. Is the hotel close enough to the attractions I want to visit? Is it going to be noisy?  I was able to rule out one hotel, simply because I could see that it was in the flight path.

Narrowing The Search

With a little tweaking, we were able to find places that were close enough to major roads for convenience, yet far enough away to avoid noise pollution. We were also able to use street view to see where the nearest restaurants are. I also plan to see which are the best places to eat by using Where The Locals Eat.

What’s On?

Once that’s done you see what events are available in your destination by visiting What’s On When (or Joobili if you’re visiting Europe) or you can visit Offbeat Guides to build your own travel guide.

Of course, I’m not saying that removing the guesswork from trip planning is a good thing. Sometimes, it’s good to just catch a last minute flight to wherever, try some couchsurfing and wait for adventure to arrive. Which option do you prefer? Which are your favorite trip planning tools?

Photo by Nezemnaya

Can you unplug on a business trip?

Business travel has changed a lot since I took my first business trip. Then, it was taken for granted that when you left your office, you would be out of reach for a few days. Sure, you might phone in on an extended trip, or communicate if you really needed to find out something, but if you were leaving the country, you wouldn’t waste the company’s money on an international phone call. There were no mobile phones and very few computers - and they certainly weren’t portable.

Fast forward some 25 years and the picture is different. Now, it’s strange if you aren’t constantly connected. I don’t know about you, but one of the first questions I ask about a hotel these days is not ‘what is the room like?’ but ‘do they have free WiFi?’ But is being constantly connected always a good thing?

21st Century Business Travel

On my very first business trip, once meetings were out of the way, I was left to my own devices. I could hang out with colleagues or take off for a bit of sightseeing. Once I had achieved what was required for the day, there was nothing more I needed to do. Now, whenever there’s a five minute break, I’m heading to the business center or to my laptop to check my email and make sure that nothing urgent has happened in my absence. While I’m at it, I also check up on the main social sites I frequent, as I wouldn’t want to be out of contact for too long.

The result of that is less down time, less time to enjoy the locations I travel to and to appreciate the diversity of human culture and behavior. I may travel more, but I often think that I see less of the places I visit on business. So, what’s the answer?

I think that if your holiday allowance permits it, tack on a couple of days to the trip so that you can explore the town you are in and the surrounding area. Leave your laptop in the hotel safe and only use your mobile phone if it’s absolutely necessary. Unplug for a day, if you dare - it’s one way to put the fun back into business travel.

I love looking at new gadgets and there are some great ones on this month’s list.

Get Fit

There’s no reason to slack on fitness just because you’re on a business trip. On my last trip, I saw dozens of people get up early to use the hotel’s fitness room. If you’re lucky enough to have good weather, then walking or jogging are an option - and that’s where the Live-Lite comes in. From Perception Digital, this device measures steps and your heart rate, ensuring that you stay on top of your fitness regime.

Ergonomic Elegance

I don’t know about you, but I often travel with an external keyboard for my laptop to save my wrists. The trouble is that it takes up a lot of space. However, I may not have to do that for much longer, since Goldtouch has released a foldable ergonomic keyboard, the GoldTouch Go! It only weighs a pound and is supposed to be comfortable to use - $139 seems a small price to pay to avoid tendonitis.

Mouse Phone

For me, the Skype Travel Mouse comes under the category of ‘neat, but do you really need it?’ It’s a mouse that slides open to reveal a phone keypad. It also has a decent sized LCD display at 128×64 pixels, and is $35 plus shipping. The fact that you only need to use a single USB port for both mouse and phone is undoubtedly a plus, so it could be worth a look.

Charge It All - Or Almost

The Charge4All is yet another device that allows you to charge multiple devices from a single power connection. It won’t charge your laptop or anything else that needs high voltage, but it will charge MP3 players, cell phones, digital cameras and the like. It’s $29.95.

Swiss Army Drive

You’ll need to pack these in your checked baggage, but the SwissFlash and Presentation Master Swiss Army Knives have all the usual array of gadgets as well as a flash drive with a maximum capacity of 32GB. There are also versions with built in laser pointers. Prices range from the low 60s to over $300.

New In Japan

We can’t wait for this one to hit our shores. It’s a credit card sized digital voice recorder - perfect for taking voice notes on the move (that’s if you haven’t already got it built into your phone). Rumor has it that you can record up to 30 hours of digital voice with this compact gadget.