Pleasure or Pain? 7 tips to make traveling fun again!

It was a traveler’s nightmare – nearly 20,000 weary passengers were stranded for more than 10 hours a few weeks ago at the Los Angeles airport (LAX) due to a technical glitch. Some sat in terminals, others waited on planes and some flights were diverted to nearby airports — which all goes to show that anything can happen when you’re traveling these days! As YSN’s chief resident road warrior, I thought I’d share some of my latest tips on making travel more of a pleasure and less of a pain:

1. Unless you get airsick, always eat a good meal before you board AND bring more food with you. You never know anymore if any snacks will be available on your flight or how long your trip will take, despite the estimated travel time.

2. Dump your bottled water at airport security, and immediately suck it up and buy another when you get to the other side. Don’t expect the flight crew to keep you hydrated any more than you expect them to feed you.

3. Bring your own headsets – good ones – and if you are noise sensitive or just easily annoyed, consider buying those awesome Bose noise canceling headsets. Worst case scenario: invest a buck or two in good earplugs.

4. Be prepared to entertain yourself. Don’t show up empty-handed: bring a book, magazine, journal, video iPod or game with you (if not all of the above). Again, you never know when you might be delayed or whether they’ll show a movie on-board. Keeping yourself busy will keep you calmer and preoccupied.

Read the last 3 tips in the YS Weekly archives!