Document your Trips
When traveling, take photographs and write in a journal to record places that you have experienced. You can look back on these and decide which experiences you enjoyed most and which ones you would like to experience again. If you keep records of your past trips, you will be able to plan for a future trip where you can experience new places or if you would like, places that you been to before and enjoyed the most. After your trip, upload photos to a personal photo page or our blog and Facebook to show others the great experience that you had!

Give your travel company feedback
Help insure that your next trip is the best possible by giving your travel company feedback about your experience. Post responses to their blog and Facebook or fill out post- trip surveys. Be sure to include everything about your trip, both good and bad. This feedback provides the travel company with the ways in which they can improve their services. In the end, your feedback will provide you with a greater future travel experience.

A Final Tip
Be prepared for anything. When you leave the United States, don’t expect to encounter our way of life again until you return home. Enjoy all the sights, people, and sounds around you.  It will be a unique cultural experience. You can enhance your experience by trying to speak the language, sampling their most traditional foods, asking questions, keeping up on the latest news and embracing cultural traditions. These tips will help you come home a more knowledgeable person with a lifetime of happy memories.

Thanks for reading 151 Travel Tips, Be sure to keep updated with the blog for more insight to make your travel experiences the best ever.

Here are some tips to help you stay healthy when you travel to other countries.

• If you take prescription medications, make absolutely sure that you have ordered enough of your medicine to last you throughout your entire trip, plus at least seven days beyond your expected date of return. It is always best to be over-prepared rather than to find yourself in a far-away place without the medication that you need to stay safe and healthy. Inform your doctor of your travel plans, and find out what you should do if you have a medical problem while you are away. Make sure that you carry a list of your health conditions and the medications that you are taking in your wallet or on your person in the event that there is a medical emergency when you are away. At the top of the list, clearly print your name, your doctor’s name and telephone number, and the telephone number and name of an emergency contact from back home. Your fellow travelers should also be privy to all this information, as you should be about their health conditions and medication use.
• Depending on your situation, ask for a prescription for some just-in-case antibiotics. Azithromycin or ciprofloxacin are frequently prescribed, but discuss with your doctor what would be best for you.
• Plan ahead. If you need any immunizations or vaccinations, see your doctor at least 6 weeks before you leave. Some vaccines don’t reach the highest protection until about 6 weeks after you get the shots.
• Do your homework. The CDC has a very helpful country-by-country list of health hazards. In addition to disease information, they also provide info on safety, crime, security, insects, etc.

Klaus Franz*, one of Vantage's many program managers in South America, brings deep knowledge and a great sense of humor to his job. Careful with that snake, Klaus!

Find out who will be leading your trip. One of the most important features of any vacation is the staff who will accompany you. Are they experienced? Knowledgeable? Caring? Professional?

A good escort, or Program Manager (PM), plays an integral role in the success of a tour. He or she works behind the scenes to make sure everything runs smoothly, skillfully turning complications into valuable adventures. Your Program Manager should be a seasoned professional, and it helps if the same escort stays with you for the length of your trip.

You’ll benefit if your Program Manager lives in the region you’re visiting. This assures that you’ll get an insider’s perspective. (Vantage’s top-notch Program Managers operate from satellite offices around the globe).

Most tour operators will not allow you to request specific PMs, so choose a tour operator that receives good all-around reviews on its program managers.

*The link above is to Klaus’s personal web site; Vantage Travel is not responsible for the contents.

Suggested itinerary for a day tour of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

This morning, 151 Tips tried out Google City Tours, a new tool from Google Labs. While it’s still in beta (meaning Google is still working out some bugs), City Tours shows real promise as a new way to plan your activities in a city you’re visiting. In this short review, we present some suggestions for using it.

Vantage Travel and many other tour operators offer trip extensions, affording you the opportunity for a few nights’ extra stay in major destinations like Amsterdam, Budapest, or Jerusalem. In many cases these extensions are programmed just like the main itinerary of a trip, but you’ll also have opportunities for afternoons, mornings, or sometimes even whole days “at leisure.” If you’ve got some time on your hands during a trip extension, or if you’re just traveling on your own and want to plan your visit to a city, what’s the best approach? Guidebooks are an excellent source of detailed information on sights to see, but planning a day’s activities from a guidebook can take a bit of work. Google City Tours offers a new way to shorten that process.

Here’s how it works:

1. Visit http://citytours.googlelabs.com/ (you don’t need a Google account to use this service).
2. At the top of the screen is a field labeled, Enter a starting address for your tour. Type in the city and country you want to explore.
3. City Tours returns a map of the city in question with a proposed itinerary. It will try to find a cluster of sights and attractions that it thinks are realistic to visit within one day, mostly within walking distance of one another. (If you’ve used Google Maps before, this should look pretty familiar).
4. Too much for one day? No problem. Click on the “Add/Remove Sights” link toward the top of the screen. The map will change to show all of the sights as round, red buttons. Click on one, and a mini-window pops up. Click the “Remove” link, and the sight is taken out of your tour.
5. Best of all, City Tours lets you specify dates, and it tries to find attractions that will be open on the dates you specify. Use the “Change Dates” link (also toward the top of the screen) to modify your options here. (Warning: Because this service is still in beta, we strongly recommend checking your results against a good guidebook to make sure attractions are actually open on the dates you choose).

The "Change Dates" screen lets you search for sights that will be available during your tour.

The Verdict

City tours has a ways to go before it’s a perfect application. For some cities, such as Jerusalem and Bucharest, we found that it shows you a map, a list of attractions… but no street names! Still, the addresses for the attractions are there, so you can easily compare to a city map from a guidebook. For other cities, such as Amsterdam, Mumbai, and Chicago, it worked like a charm. At this stage, City Tours looks great for getting a suggested itinerary — but again, we do recommend checking the results you get against a guidebook. Google will no doubt work on improving this service over time, but despite the bugs, we’re already pretty impressed. Give it a try!

Rent a travel video or a feature film of your destination; you’ll learn a lot and they’re fun to watch. Libraries can also provide you with a wealth of information. Learning about your destination’s history, culture, government and people before you leave will make your journey more meaningful.

Research on the Web
Search the Internet for information about your destination. All countries, as well as major cities, have an official tourist board or visitor’s bureau Web site. Many travel publishers’ Web sites have valuable destination information, including these two:

• concierge.com
• fodors.com

Some excellent book sources
These stores welcome mail orders:

The Globe Corner Bookstore
90 Mount Auburn Street
Cambridge MA 02138
Call: (617) 497-6277
On the Web: www.globecorner.com

The Complete Traveller Bookstore
199 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Call: (212) 685-9007
On the Web: www.ctrarebooks.com

The Savvy Traveller
310 S Michigan Ave # 1
Chicago, IL‎
Call: (312) 525-9300‎
On the Web: www.thesavvytraveller.com

Distant Lands
62 S. Raymond Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91105
On the Web: www.distantlands.com

Or try these major booksellers on the Internet:

• Abebooks.com (new & used)
• Alibris.com (new & used)
• Amazon.com: www.amazon.com
• Barnes and Noble: www.bn.com
• Borders Books: www.borders.com
• Rand McNally: www.randmcnallystore.com