Travel Shoes

I've decided that the whole airline experience requires some changes in thinking on my part. Last trip, the one to the U.K., I wore my hiking boots on the airplane, mostly to keep the heavy critters out of my luggage. But for this trip, I've decided to pack the hiking boots, weight be darned, and wear Crocs on the airplane. I'm thinking that Crocs will be much easier to wear and remove going through the metal detector experience. And Crocs will be so much more comfortable for the hours and hours of flight time. With all those holes they will be cool and comfortable and I won't be looking for a way to remove my shoes when my feet get too hot. I think I'm going to be able to wear the Crocs (I'm taking a chocolate brown pair) on the boat with any sort of attire, from shorts and dress pants and sport coat. Right on.

Travel Insurance

I have spent some days now trying to decide whether to buy "Trip Cancellation Insurance," and, if so, what company to go with. After much bewildered rambling on the internet I discovered sites called "Squaremouth.com and "Insuremytrip.com." These sites will allow you to feed in your trip criteria and then it pulls up all the insurers who would be able to provide you with insurance. We were also interested in medical coverage for foreign countries. Oddly enough, even though we had trip insurance for our vacation to Italy in 2006, I didn't even give it a thought for our trip to the U.K. in 2008. Oh, well, good thing I didn't need it. Rick Steve's recommends a handful like Travel Guard (we used this one for Italy), Access America (Connie's travel agent cousin uses this one), and Travel Insurance International. After much thought I decided that maybe my USAA card (offered to military and ex-military personal) might offer travel insurance recommendations. That idea proved to be my salvation as they recommended Travel Insurance International. I got their "World Wide Trip Protector" plan plus medical coverage for $700.00, or about 6% of the cruise and airfare cost. Naturally, I'd love to save that money, but when you're going on a cruise, delays and cancellations of anything can leave you standing on the dock watching the ship sail into the sunset. Not a happy thought.