Suebobian Travel Tips

I am a rockstar traveler. I have fun wherever I go. People say they hate airports. I love airports. They hate hotels. I love hotels. They hate being lost...I hate being lost and hungry, but if I am well-fed and don't have to be somewhere on time, I am fine with being lost.

Here are my top travel tips, and I must say they are good ones. Focused on the hotel traveler, because my idea of camping? Is a place without good room service.

1. Take a night light. One of these without a bulb to break. Put it in the bathroom so when you get up you don't have to 1) Blind yourself with the superbright bathroom light and 2) Make your travel partner want to kill you when you wake them up with the superloud bathroom fan when you have to get up three times because you have that little intestinal problem you always get every time you travel.

2. Pack a clothes pin. You can use it to eliminate the crack in the drapes, the one that always seems to be there so the streetlight outside can SHINE RIGHT IN to your eyeballs OMG how is it always so perfectly aligned so it beams right in your eyeballs?

3. Ear plugs, those foam kind. Get a pack of 10 for a couple bucks at the drug store. Noisy airplanes make you tired. So do those three-year-old twins behind you.

4. The inflatable neck pillow. That, plus the earplugs, equals sleep, blessed sleep.

5. I have stopped at hundreds of McDonald's restaurants to use the restroom, and they are mostly pretty clean. I never buy anything and I don't feel guilty. Hey, they are destroying the rainforest and creating massive paper waste - the least they can do for me is let me pee. Besides, I ate approximately $187,000 worth of food there as a teen. I have paid my McDues.

6. Clif Bars. They taste good, cost between $1 and $1.50 and they will save you from spending $14 on a dry, tasteless airport sandwich made by a sullen lady with a hairnet who mocks you in another language to her coworkers. Clif Bars are also great when you check in late and don't want to raid the minibar. They go in my luggage every single time I travel.

7. Trail mix is a good idea, too. You can make a meal of trail mix if you have to. And it looks all healthy and stuff, so you don't FEEL like you have just eaten 900 calories out of the palm of your hand.

8. It's 11 pm, you have just checked in to your hotel and your shoulders feel like they are shrouded in barbed wire from schlepping and stressing all day. You would like to have an adult beverage but there is no way you are going to the hotel bar, where it seems to be locals-only karaoke night at 100 decibels and the woman singing looks like Dolly Parton if Dolly Parton weighed over 250 lbs and had a tattoo on her neck. A couple little bottles of screw top wine packed in double plastic bags can come in handy for a drink in your room.


9. Nine times out of ten, the hotel restaurant sucks.

10. Some little flat travel slippers will make you so cozy and happy padding around your hotel room with your feet all warm. Besides, do you REALLY want your feet touching that carpet? I didn't think so.

Bonus tip 11. Take your own shampoo even if you are going to a nice hotel. Even good hotels sometimes have horrible hair products like Pantene or, alternately, that awful bandaid-smelling Bliss Lemon and Sage Supershine Shampoo - yes, W Hotel, I am looking at YOU.

Ok, my people, travel light and journey lightly. And if you have a spare ticket, give me a call.