Three tips for traveling from day 1 of my vacation.

1) Don’t settle. The staff at the hotel tried to put us in a room with two-doubles as opposed to a king. We had made a reservation for a king. I immediately called down to the front desk and they sent up a bellman with new room keys. I suspect the majority of the time it happens they are doing it because people won’t speak up or say anything.

2) Be gracious and polite to everyone. When we got on the plane after our two hour delay (though it felt much longer) K and I were still up beat and positive. We sat down in the row and it wasn’t the exit row as expected. Apparently they had changed planes on us, but the steward had a sharp eye and invited us to sit on the real exit row. The plane had plenty of empty seats so there weren’t any issues with doing so. But we were polite and upbeat. If we had come in snarling and griping about the delay, he would have been less likely to offer us the better seats.

3) Get a Flip camera. I got one when it rolled up on Woot a few weeks back and it’s amazingly fun to be able to whip it out and shoot video with ease. Then to take it back to the hotel room and plug into the laptop to immediately upload.