Traveling tips

Please Do Not Disturb

This will the last day I blog about my Hawaii trip, so I wanted to close off this week-long series with some useful takeaways for my loyal readers.

When traveling, I've come to find that good ideas always come to me about things I wish I had brought on my trip in order to make life easier or just a little more convenient. You can benefit now from my trip errors because here are some tips that might improve your next trip:

1. Money - Before you go on your trip make a trip to your local bank and ask them to break your large denomination bills into bunch of $1's. These will come in very handy in the US where you have to give people tips. People who expect to be tipped include the luggage handler, your tour guide, housekeeping at the hotel and other miscellaneous instances. If you bring the $1 beforehand, you can avoid going to the ATM and incurring a charge because you're using an ATM that's not from your bank.

2. Health - Bring pre-moistened wipes for your hands to kill germs. Purell also works. Sometimes you want to clean your hands before you eat something, but there are no restrooms close by. Well, the next best thing to clean your hands would be pre-moistened wipes.

3. Food
- Bring a plastic container and plastic utensils for left over food. These come in handy when you buy food from the grocery store and need a container in which to store the leftovers, or if you feel like packing a snack for your day trip in an environmentally friendly manner.
- Locate a grocery store so that you can purchase travel essentials such as fruits, veggies and cheap bottled water. I've discovered that cherry tomatoes make great snacks during the day because they are juicy. Store them in the above mentioned plastic container so they won't be crushed in your day pack.
- Pack an empty plastic water bottle so that you can fill it with tap water in your hotel. This is one way to avoid buying expensive bottled water. Note: Only do this if you think the tap water is potable. Don't do it if you start seeing things swimming around your drinking water! ;-)

4. Luggage - Pack as light as you can because your luggage will be a burden to you as you travel around. It's best to pack clothing that can be mixed and matched so that you can create different looks with a small number of items.

Do you have any travel tips that you'd like to share?