Another Use For Shower Caps

I found myself in a hotel in Boston on the day after Thanksgiving with a half a pecan pie, which is the kind of thing that can happen to people in my family.

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Sleeping With Your Coworkers?

A recent poll by Orbitz For Business came up with one chilling statistic: 24 percent of the business travelers surveyed said they had been required to share a hotel room with a colleague.

Let me say this about that: ewww.

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Still Not Good Enough

USA Today is reporting that the push for a passengers bill of rights is gaining momentum in Congress again, but that advocates for passengers’ rights don’t believe the proposals now on the table go far enough.

For one thing, they don’t set a limit on how long passengers can be held on a plane on the ground. And the provisions on how passengers will be fed and treated while they’re being held look pretty wishy-washy to me.

But enough out of me. Arthur Frommer, a steadfast advocate for the common traveler, has a brilliant blog entry on the topic.

Airline Food Rated

The Diet Detective site has posted a very thorough and useful study of the nutritional value of airline food, from the free snack packs to the boxed meals that passengers pay for. USA Today has a story about it.

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Why Economy Class Sucks

The New York Times had an illuminating story by Michelle Higgins on Sunday about why coach class service is going to hell – and why first and business classes are going the other way.

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Travelers Gift Guide

I come from a traveling clan, so holiday gifts are often travel-related. Here are some of the winning gifts that I’ve given and received over the past couple of years:

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Back In Boston

Here’s the view I woke up to this morning:

The skyline in the background is Boston. The lump in the foreground is the kid.

A hint: if you bid on Priceline for a four-star hotel in the Boston airport area, you’ll get the Hilton or the Hyatt. And they’re both very nice.

Small Cruise Ship Sinking

It’s sad news that the adventure cruise ship the Explorer is sinking off the coast of Antarctica, but a vast relief that everyone was rescued.

No doubt this will prompt another look at cruise ship safety, as we saw after the sinking of the Greek ship the Sea Diamond in April. And safety is never a bad thing to think about.

But I do hope that these two incidents are kept in perspective. Neither involved the kind of modern, mass-market cruise ships that carry most vacationers today.

Still, if there’s any lesson I’m taking away from this, it may be to pay a little better attention to the safety drill on my next cruise.

Midwest Airlines: Just Like The Rest?

Midwest Airlines got top ratings among economy airlines in the United States in a recent Zagat survey. But it seems to be changing the strategy that got it there.

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A Pathetic Amtrak Story

The kid flew into Boston yesterday, one of the busiest travel days of the year, and she arrived with a real travel nightmare story. But it wasn’t about her flight. It was about an Amtrak trip the previous week in California.

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