Look before you line up

The ultimate website for packing well is OneBag.com. Created 11 years ago, this site encourages people to travel with only one bag, as its name suggests. But even travelers who carry several bags will find useful packing tips on this site. A few years ago, I met OneBag.com's creator, Doug Dyment. He's a technical marketer in San Francisco who uses the site to share his thoughts on the the superiority of traveling light. He's refined his strategies over the years as he's learned from hundreds of fellow travelers who have e-mailed him. Dyment, one of the most gentlemanly fellows I've ever met, has a fantastic trick for preventing your clothes from becoming wrinkled. As he says, "The common practice of individually folding items of clothing, then piling them atop one another, is just about the worst thing you can do from a packing perspective." His trick is "bundle wrapping" instead. His explanation is better than any I can give, so I encourage you to visit his site.

Family travel was one of the hot topics discussed at a panel here in New York City yesterday. Seems the trend among families is for vacations that offer "one-stop shopping." Two of the panelists (Emily Kaufman, aka The Travel Mom; and Dorothy Dowling, the senior vice president of marketing and sales for Best Western) explained that families are more and more likely to look for hotels or cruises that will take care of everything: lodging, meals, entertainment, tours, outdoor activities, and so on. The other panelists from AAA and Southwest Airlines agreed. All-inclusive vacations are a far cry from the family vacations of my childhood, where my parents would spend months before each trip piecing together every last detail, from hotel reservations and train tickets right down to which trail we would hike at Yosemite and what snacks we'd bring along the way. I guess the new approach shouldn't come as much of a surprise--no country has embraced the notion of one-stop shopping quite like ours. Still, I have to wonder if there isn't something to be said for creating your own trip, specifically tailored to your family's needs. After all, even the best trip coordinator wouldn't have known that I preferred Reese's Peanut Butter Cups for a snack and my sister wanted a Kit Kat. Feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below

On July 14, Paris launched a cheap, accessible bike program for residents and tourists to use practically for free, with 10,600 bikes at 750 stands around the city. (We touted this in our July/August issue.) How fantastic was it that Paris introduced 10,600 bikes at 750 stands around the city for everyone to use in free half-hour increments? Well... Once the system was up and running on July 14, we learned to our dismay that the Velib kiosks (which unlock the bikes) only recognize credit and bank cards with microchips in them--a small technical detail that effectively bans tourists from North America from renting a Velib bike. Amazingly, Paris had no idea that other countries don't routinely issue cards with microchips in them, so right now, unless you have a chip-card, there is no alternate means of gaining access to the Velib system. It turns out that the bike programs in Brussels and Lyon also work on the same type of system, and also require a credit card with a microchip. In Brussels, however, you can get around it by purchasing a short-term ticket at the city's main tourism office. In Lyon, you can buy a Tecely card that works with Lyon's entire public transportation system. (In order to get it, though, you have to show up at a Lyon public transportation office with your passport, a photo of yourself, and a hotel bill as proof of residence; fill out out an online form on the velov.grandlyon.com site; and then wait for the city to activate your account.) We can only hope that these programs will change soon. As soon as there are any updates, we'll let you know.