Vacation deals

A week ago I returned from my first journey to New Mexico (as opposed to many journeys to Old Mexico) and spent the last few days of it in Albuquerque. This is another one of those mid-sized cities that’s a great value and it does a pretty good job of appealing to all age groups. …

I piled the wife, kid, and luggage in the car for a four-day weekend to the unexplored lands of…Huntsville, Alabama? I get interviewed a lot in the media about how families can take a vacation without spending a fortune. It doesn’t matter for them how dirt cheap Guatemala or Thailand is right now because they …

My new MSNBC column (via Tripso) is out now, called Reservations About Making Reservations. Of course the majority of backpackers go for months or a year finding rooms on the fly without even thinking about it, but from the comments I’ve gotten already on Tripso, you’d think I proposed some radical idea that’s going to …

I’m neck-deep researching a travel planning guide I’m co-authoring with Rob Sangster that will cover Mexico and Central America and here’s a useful tidbit of info worth passing along. Following are bus prices for executive or first-class buses between several cities in Mexico. I know, I know–if you’re a backpacker on a strict budget you’re …

I just got back from a few weeks of being an active travel writer, which is in contrast to being an active traveler. For one thing, I stayed in some very swanky hotels in the line of work, while staying at some not-so-swanky ones at other times. In contrast, I have to admit that the …