Our Top Travel Resolutions for 2006

Finding healthy breakfast alternatives at an airport can prove difficult. I always travel with an insulated travel mug. Before leaving home I fill it with a high-protein cereal and then request low-fat milk on the flight.

Don't assume a single room costs less than a double one. I booked a hotel in Spain online and noticed that rates were the same whether I booked a single or a double, but the single was much smaller and its bathroom had only a small shower stall and no tub.

Whenever I go somewhere, I bring a supply of postcards from my hometown. I write my name, address, and e-mail on the back, and offer a card to new friends so we can keep in touch. I also pack small souvenirs (key rings, etc.) that carry my local sports teams' logos. They make meaningful but inexpensive thank-you gifts for the small kindnesses that ease one's way during a trip.

While traveling, I love to send postcards to friends--and also to myself. I get the best photo postcard of the place I visited and write down what I did there as a reminder. When I get home, I tape them in my travel journals so I can flip back and forth between the photo and the reverie.

To ensure the studs of pierced and delicate earrings don't get damaged, I put them in a film canister. An added benefit is that they're less likely to be stolen when left in a suitcase or hotel room, because thieves presume there's nothing inside but film.

We always e-mail our itinerary--including flights, hotels, and confirmation numbers--to ourselves and to family members. If our luggage is lost or our wallets are stolen, all of this essential information is just an Internet café and a few quick clicks away.

If you're traveling with a companion, pack half of your belongings in his or her suitcase and vice versa. This way, if one piece of luggage gets lost, you'll each still have some clothing.

If you're a woman traveling alone, or your accommodations don't inspire confidence, simply wedge a small rubber doorstop at the base of the door when you're inside the room. It'll be virtually impossible to open the door from the outside.

Put an address label on your one-time-use camera. At a Final Four game in Indianapolis, we exchanged identical Kodak Fun Savers with another traveler so that we could take souvenir photos of each other with our respective cameras. But afterward, we couldn't tell whose camera was whose. Luckily, I remembered how many exposures remained on mine, so we got ours back. Next time, I'll just label it.

I live in coastal Florida, where the electricity sometimes goes out during violent storms. Before a trip, I place a few ice cubes in a plastic bag and put the bag in the freezer. If the ice has melted and refrozen by the time I get home, I'll know we've had a power outage and that any food left in the refrigerator may be unsafe to consume.

Before leaving on a trip, I print the names and addresses of my friends and family onto clear mailing labels. (All standard word-processing programs have preset templates for creating address labels.) Then, I take the address-label sheets with me on vacation. Since the addresses are already saved in my computer and the mailing labels are adhesive, addressing postcards has become really easy.

On the final day of a recent Caribbean vacation, I tried to arrange for a late checkout, but was told it wasn't possible. The hotel offered me the use of a day room; it would have been perfect, but it was being used by other guests, and there was a very long wait for the shower. I went back upstairs and saw that someone was just about to clean my room. I told the housekeeper that I understood she had to do her job, but I wondered if I could I take a quick shower first. She offered to clean next door while I took my shower. I tipped her $10 and then left for the airport.

While traveling abroad, I've frequently encountered some appallingly bad (and often very funny) English translations of menus. In those cases, I simply offered to clean up the translations in exchange for a meal. This has worked quite a few times.

Before you leave the United States, photocopy receipts for any expensive items you're taking with you. This way, you won't have to argue with customs on the way home about declaring items you didn't buy abroad. (I'm a photographer, and I always bring expensive cameras on vacations.)

Recycle the long plastic bags in which you receive your home-delivered newspapers. Slip your shoes into the bags before packing them in your suitcase.

The magnets you use on a refrigerator will also stick well to most hotel and motel room doors, turning them into makeshift bulletin boards. Post theater tickets, itineraries, reminder notes, and any other useful information, then grab what you need before you leave the room for the day.

If I plan to travel to several countries that use different currencies, I pack a few cloth change purses: U.S. dollars go into one, British pounds in another, euros in a third, etc. When I'm sightseeing, I carry only the money I need; the purses that I'm not using are locked away in the hotel safe. I avoid fumbling around in shops and mixing up coins that look alike. Plus,I always know exactly how much cash I have.

Traveling to non-English-speaking countries can be daunting for people with food allergies. Find someone fluent in the local language to write out what you are allergic to, the seriousness of the allergy (we had a friend include the phrase "this could kill me"), and what to do if you fall ill.

Know your PINs! My husband and I left home with very little cash on us, and instead of stopping to get money at the airport, my husband--ever the procrastinator--decided to wait until we got to Cancún to use his ATM card. Guess what? It didn't work in any of the machines. And although he had several credit cards for cash advances, he didn't know the PINs off the top of his head. We charged everything we could during our stay, but most of the markets don't take credit cards. Needless to say, I didn't come home with a lot of souvenirs.

Create your own postcards by writing on the back of photographs that you've taken and developed while still on your trip.

Grab-rails and nonskid surfaces aren't common in European bathtubs and showers. I pack a few decorative rubber pads that have non-adhesive suction cups, so I can use them when needed to prevent a slip or fall, and then I take them with me to the next hotel.

Carry a Polaroid camera when traveling to developing countries. In Cambodia, several village children gathered around us, posed enthusiastically for pictures, and were fascinated by their images in our digital camera. We wanted to send them the pictures, but they were unable to tell us their address. Polaroids would have solved the problem!

We decided to take our bikes on our last Caribbean cruise. It was a little crowded in the cabin, so the steward let us store them down the hall with the wheelchairs. We were last off the ship when we docked in Bermuda, but after five minutes we'd left our fellow passengers in the dust. And in less than fifteen minutes, we were far away from the busy port, enjoying a beautiful, deserted snorkeling beach.

Even if you're staying at a standard resort hotel, take advantage of the day passes sold by many all-inclusive resorts (i.e., the right to use their facilities--such as swimming pools and beach chairs--and enjoy their meals for a day). The passes are primarily designed for cruise passengers on day trips but can be obtained by anyone for very little money. For persons staying in a less-expensive, no-frills hotel, it can give you the experience of a larger, more extensive resort for a day or two.

Tired of catching colds while traveling? Take along a travel-size package of Clorox wipes. Disinfect the tray table and armrests on the airplane, and the telephone and TV remote in your hotel room.

Dry-cleaning bags stop clothes from wrinkling. Slide each garment into its own bag (leave the hanger at home) and place them flat on your bed, one on top of another. Then carefully fold the entire stack to fit it in your suitcase. Once you get to your hotel, hang everything up as soon as you can. You'll never unpack a suitcase of wrinkled clothes again.

We've noticed that when booking a flight for our family under one reservation, some airlines will only credit the 1,500 bonus miles (500 for booking online, 500 each way for printing boarding passes) to the person whose name the reservation is under. This is regardless of whether the other family members have mileage accounts. To avoid this, make a separate reservation for each of your family members and then pick seats together.

With two of our last three car rentals, the local branch wanted documentation beyond the standard insurance card issued by our insurance company. In San Juan, we were delayed a half hour while the agent made phone calls to verify that our liability insurance was good in Puerto Rico. In Miami, if we hadn't provided proof that our insurance covered rental cars, we would've been charged a daily collision insurance fee. Fortunately, we knew ahead of time and took a copy of the pertinent section of our policy. Our credit card included car rental insurance, but proof of that coverage was also required.

When overseas, I carry a "cheat sheet" that includes exchange rates and metric conversions. Currency conversions are available at oanda.com.

Give your children a coach's whistle in case they get lost; put it on a ribbon so they can wear it around their neck. The piercing sound may be annoying, but you'll definitely find them quicker!