As the holiday season rolls around, family trips are a popular activity. Although trips and vacations can be fun and relaxing, sometimes the actual planning can be a headache. Local Travel Tips help alleviate your travel woes. We’ve already discussed safety and planning a flawless family vacation. In addition, we also researched apps to cover all areas of your planning from pre-flight, lodging, activities while you’re there, to easy ways to share your memories with your loved ones.

PRE-TRIP PLANS:

Kayak is a free app that allows you to compare and purchase flights, hotel rooms,and car rentals. It also allows you to view/manage itinerary, tracks your flights; look up baggage fees, airline phone numbers and airport information.

Tripit takes all of your trip details, and creates one helpful itinerary. It can also sync with your calender, eliminating that pocket book and traveling manila folder. Tripit Pro is recommended for frequent travelers and costs about $49.00 a year.

ENROUTE:

Gateguru is the best carry-on, it’s like Yelp for airports. We’ve all had a delay or longer than desired layover, with Gateguru you can view airport security wait times. You can also look up tips and reviews on amenities offered at your airport, like where the best cup of coffee is, or the closest 10-min neck massage.This is one of our favorite apps, especially in large airports such as O’hare, JFK, LAX, etc. knowing where the closest eatery, drink, restroom, or literature stop is essential.

WHERE TO STAY:

Trip Advisor enables you to browse reviews, opinions, and photos of: hotels, restaurants, attractions. The near me now feature shows things closest to you and also allows you to bookmark it in the my saves, for future visits.

Priceline is perfect for those last minute accommodations. You can bid on cheap, decent rooms categorized by location, rating and usual price.

WHILE YOU’RE THERE:

Goby searches activities near you including, live-music shows, family-friendly outings. Complete with details, photos, and map.

Urbanspoon helps settle the universal problematic question, of where should we eat? Shake the slot-machine interface to add some entertainment to your decision. Use GPS to find food near you. Filter your choices by neighborhood, cuisine, or price. There are ratings and reviews from newspapers, bloggers, and fellow eaters.

TRAVELING ABROAD?

Onada Currency Converter is beneficial whether it’s credit card or cash exchanges you need to calculate. Onada helps whether you’re wanting to check/compare the current exchange rate, or making sure your exchange is calculated correctly. This free app comes equip with over 190 currencies for your traveling needs.

Itranslate helps you speak like a local, and avoid foreign language mixups (although these make for great traveling stories). Besides lightning fast translations, it includes 52 languages; essentially an interpretor right in your pocket.

Convert Clothes is for the shopaholic in all of us. It gives you all clothing conversions in one area. Just pick your size and country and voila, see the equivalent in whatever you decide. This should hopefully lessen (but probably not eliminate) the “not the right size” problem.

MAKING MEMORIES:

Fotobabble helps you quickly create and add voice to your images, and share with friends. Make and share memories with a talking postcard in a few simple steps:
1. Snap photo
2. Speak into microphone
3. Share through email, Twitter, and Facebook.

Instagram is another great photo app that allows you to add filters and effects to the photos you take on your phone, then allows you to stream it through your social media accounts
( Instagram, Twitter, Facebook).

Make the most of your travels, this holiday season! All of these apps are available to any smart phone users ( iPhone, Blackberry, Android), and are sure to make your trip a little less stressful and a lot more fun! For more tips and recommendations check out our about us section!

When this is the case, there are several things that you can do to make the experience less miserable. Here are a few ideas:

1. Take a good cold medicine before you go and take more with you
2. Fill up your pockets with Kleenexes and other tissues whenever you have the opportunity
3. Make sure you eat and stay hydrated so that you do not become dehydrated
4. Rest when you have the opportunity
5. Try to keep your illness to yourself and not share it with others

As you do these things, the experience will become less miserable both for yourself and for others. In addition, you may even still be able to enjoy parts of your trip.

A savvy person is able to utilize all of these things to their advantage, chaining them together to get a good result out of the experience. It is possible to set up feeds and reports that can automatically let the person know what is happening and alert them to deals.

For example, setting up a cruise using special airfare deals and booking a room on the boat as part of the process can save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. The process may be inconvenient at times, but it is well worth it all in the end.

There are many things that you can do to relieve the stress while you are traveling. Here are a few things that you may want to consider:

1. Pack light-the less you have to carry around, the less you have to keep track of and worry about
2. Load up your cell phone-when you have all of the contact information you need, you will not feel lost
3. Snack-healthy snacks can keep you going and keep your blood sugar up so that you do not get tired
4. Read a book-escaping into another world can help you let go of the stress that is surrounds you
5. Get a massage-even a simple chair massage can help ease the stress out of your muscles

By reducing the stress that you feel while traveling, you will be much more relaxed when you arrive at your destination. As a result, you will be able to enjoy your vacation much more.

When people are go through the X-ray machines at the airport, there is often a lot of confusion when it comes to what needs to go through, what can stay on you, and what needs to be in a separate container of its own. Instead of wasting time having to get everything through in the proper way through trial and error, it is better to know what to except so you are ready the first time through.

When it comes to items that need to go through the scanner, be prepared to take off your shoes, all jackets and sweaters, and any scarves, jewelry, etc. The basic rule is, if it is loose, it comes off. If you have metal belt buckles, hair clips, loose change, or anything else in your pockets, take it out and put them in a small X-ray container.

If you are traveling with a lap top, take it out of its case and put it through the machine in its own container. Shoes can usually go directly on the screening belt.

If you are careful to follow these rules the first time through, you will save yourself time and hassle. For a more comprehensive list on how to prepare, check out this site.