I still remembering the time when we went to the tiny island of Caicos during one of our cruises and I needed to call home to check on the family. We had waited to disembark in order to purchase a phone card and use a public phone instead of paying a ridiculously high per-minute rate on the ship. To our surprise the only two public phones on the island were broken, and if it wouldn’t had been for a good samaritan who lend us his phone, we would have been force to pay the cruise rate or not call home at all.
A new little invention called Magic Jack is a money saving device that will allow any cruise passenger to call home from the ship at a much lower rate.
Magic Jack is basically a small device that you connect to any USB port of any computer with internet access, then you connect a regular phone to Magic Jack and voila! You have free unlimited calls to the US and Canada.

The device costs around $39.00 and it comes with the first year of unlimited local and long distance calls. After the first year, the service is $20.00 a year. All calls to the US and or Canada are free, it doesn’t matter where are you calling from. So, you might be in Europe using Magic Jack and the call is still free.
In order to use Magic Jack on a cruise ship, you still need to pay for regular internet access, but because the price of internet access is around $0.75 per minute (even wireless internet access) compared to $6.99 per minute for a phone call, you’ll be saving over $6.00 per minute on phone calls.

Many cruise lines have now signed contracts with wireless phone companies such as AT&T and T-Mobile that allows you to make calls from any ship using your cellular phone; however the rates is considered as international roaming by your cell phone provider and it might cost you between $1.75 to $4.50 per minute. This is cheaper than using the cabin phone, but much more expensive than calling home using the Magic Jack.

 



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Since the government changed its rules requiring all US citizens to have a passport if they want to travel abroad, there had been a flood of passport applications which caused many delays and problems.

But now there is another alternative to passports. Since last month, the US government began issuing a “passport card”. This wallet size card, is similar to a Driver License but it can be used for people returning to the United States from Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Bermuda. This makes it perfect for cruise passengers traveling to the Caribbean.

And there are even better news. The new passport card is cheaper. It cost $45.00 if you don’t have a regular passport ($20.00 if you do) and $35.00 for children. And it is valid for as long as a regular passport: 10 years

The only drawback is that it cannot be used for air travel or for places where you are required a Visa stamped in your passport.

You can request the new passport card already through the regular channels, such as post office, or the State Department

On a related news, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that it will propose allowing teenagers 18 and younger traveling with teams or organizations, and all children 15 or younger, to use a certified birth certificate to cross the border from Canada, instead of a passport.

The change is an attempt to solve the “team bus” problem, in which critics said school trips and games between teams of neighboring towns would be canceled under the new U.S. rules requiring a passport to cross the border.





There was a time, when the flight attendants’ job was to take care of passenger’s needs and make your flight as pleasant as possible. As soon as you would push that call button, one of them would rush to your seat and asked you how they could be helpful. They would greed you when you came in, and say good bay when you left the airplane. They used to help you with your carry on luggage, guide you to your seat and a be nice in general. That is the case no more. To my horror, I discovered that flight attendants have become sales people, trying to sell you every thing, from overprices sodas and peanuts to credit card enrollments.

I have flown at least 6 times in the last 3 months with two different airlines. Delta and Spirit Air. It had been a while since my last flight (more than 3 years) so I was in shock to see how much the job of a flight attendant had changed.

Delta:

I flew Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta, GA on Delta Airlines. The seatbelt sign was still on when one of the flight attendant announced over the PA system that they would begin distributing Master Card applications to all the passengers who wanted to apply for the credit card. She went on to give a long list of “benefits” if you were to apply: from bonus frequent flyers miles to cash rebates. She went on for several minutes, really trying to convince the passengers to complete the application. For a moment I felt like I was attending one of those time share sales presentation.
Several minutes later, all three flight attendants starting walking the aisles asking every single passengers if they wanted to apply for the credit card. During the whole flight they repeated the same sales pitch over the PA at least 3 other times.
Later on, they collected all the applications from those passengers who felt compelled to apply for a credit card 30,000 feet in the air.
During the flight they also announced several times that they had all kind of drinks and other items from the Sky Mall catalog for sale.





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We all love free stuff, not matter what it is. Las Vegas is especially good at given free stuff. Good free stuff!

Here is the list, and how you can get it:

 

Free backpack and other goodies:

 

Ever hotel and casino in Las Vegas tries to get you to become part of their player’s club. Becoming a club member allows the hotel to track how much you spend on their machines, plus it also gives them the opportunity to mail you (or email you) their marketing material. It is a gold data mine for them. Several hotels were giving away travel backpacks. They retail between $20 to $30.00 each. Their free stuff usually varies from month to month. If you are traveling with you spouse, each one can enroll on their player’s club individually, so you can get two gifts.

 

Free Money

Along with the goodies, several hotels gives you either free money in the form of a refund check or in the form of credit to play in their slot machines when you enroll on their players’ club. On my resent visit to Las Vegas, there were several hotels refunding back the first $100.00 that you loose on their casino. The refund would come in the form of a check that they would mail to you 4 to 6 weeks after your visit. (the catch here is that you would need to go back to the same hotel at a later time in order to cash your check, but if you are planning a second visit to Las Vegas, is free money nevertheless)

 

Free Food and Free Shows

Timeshares sales are very popular in Las Vegas and if you are willing to spend 2 hours of your time listening to a motivated sales person trying to sell you a timeshare, then you can really get compensated for your time. Most developers selling timeshare will give you 2 tickets to a Las Vegas show plus dinner for two at a popular buffet as long as you go to their presentation. Most of them allow you to pick the show you want to see from within a list of shows they have available. In addition, they even give you a free hotel stay as part of the package. When we went to Las Vegas, my wife and didn’t have anything planned for one of the days, so sit through one of those timeshare presentation and in return we got two tickets to a show, a buffet dinner for two and 4 nights hotel stay in St. Thomas, US Virgin Island. Not bad for two hours of your time.






 

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In our second day we went to the Grand Canyon. I think if you are in Las Vegas and have a day to spare, you ought to visit the Grand Canyon. It is a full day trip (by bus or car) or several hours if you decide to use one of the several helicopter rides. The price for bus tour is about $80.00 per person and it includes free lunch and park entrance fee. Helicopter rides are about $300.00 per person and it also includes lunch.

We decided to take the bus tour, not only because it was cheaper, but because it also stops at Hoover Dam.

Having been to places with plenty of mountains filled with trees and vegetation, I was really surprise to see how arid those Arizona/Nevada mountains were. You do not see a single tree anywhere. Just rocks and brownish dirt everywhere.

Hoover Dam was impressive, but for some reason I thought it would be bigger. Perhaps because I’ve seen that movie “Fool Rush In” several times and the shots of the Hoover Dam on the movie make it look much bigger than what it is. I also did not see the famous white line dividing Arizona and Nevada painted in the middle of the road. Perhaps that was another Hollywood illusion painted just for the movie.

Security was high around the dam. Our bus had to stop on both directions to be inspected by a Federal agent. It only took 3 or 4 minutes and did not delayed our trip.

The bus stopped in two different places in the Grand Canyon. We went to the popular South Rim. I did not know there are actually a couple of places where you can stay right inside the park. You can stay on a rustic 2 people cabin, or a beautiful hotel room overlooking the canyon. Prices are not cheap. A single room can cost up to $250.00 per night. Cabins are a little cheaper, but not for much. I also learned that because the rooms are limited, they fill quickly and sometimes people has to book them several months in advance.

You can actually hike your way down to the bottom of the canyon. But it can take you a full day just to go down. I met a man who was coming up after spending the night at the bottom of the canyon. He said it was a great experience. If walking is not your thing, you can always take a mule trip to the bottom. Prices are around $135.00 per person. Unfortunately if you are on a tour, you would not have time to go down the canyon, as the bus only stops there for 1 hour, then it moves you to a different location for another hour or two.

I took plenty of pictures and I was even able to create a composed panoramic picture.

On the way back to Las Vegas, our bus broke down in the middle of the desert. It was an interesting experience, as we saw plenty of wild life. From a lonely coyote to several prairie dogs coming in an out of their holes.

Finally after two hours, another bus pick us up and we got back to the hotel at 11:00 PM (we have left at 5:45 AM)

If you are booking a day trip to the Grand Canyon, make sure you do not book anything else for the day. There were several people who had purchased show tickets for that night and they almost lost them because when the bus broke down. Luckily for them, another bus stopped by and pick several people from our group and they were able to go back in time.






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My sister in law offered to keep the kids for a week so we could take a vacation just my wife and I. Suddenly a list of places I’ve been wanting to go, but didn’t have the time or the opportunity to go started rushing through my mind. I quickly thought of Punta Cana (D.R) where I heard the all inclusive packages are really attractive, Cancun (which I wanted to go back after spending 4 days there), Las Vegas or a Caribbean cruise.

I discarded Cancun because I’ve been there already and I wanted to go to a new place. I always enjoy cruises, but after doing some quick search I couldn’t find any cruise with an interesting itinerary, other than the same old  port of calls (by the way someone who works for the cruise industry told me that almost all the cruise lines decided to leave a lot of their ships in Europe during this summer because it was more profitable for them to charge passengers in Euro than in Dollars) I did check into Punta Cana, but I needed to save some money for our annual family vacation to Orlando in a month and Punta Cana would be too much money. So my last choice was Las Vegas.





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After several months of taking the original blog down, I had to bring it back up. Traveling is still my passion and I felt like I was missing something by not being able to write about my experience. So I decided to bring my blog back, create new forum for people to share their travel experiences and opinions and continue writing about the travel industry.

I closed the blog when it was already hitting closed to 10,000 visitors a month and with several links to other blogs. I am hoping my old readers still find this site interesting and come back.

The reason I closed the original blog was because I was involved in another project and between my regular job and my other responsibilities I really didn’t have too much free time in my hands.

In the following dates, I will be posting my experience during my first visit to Las Vegas. A wonderful city that you should visit at least once. I got an unbelievable deal on the airfare and hotel and I’ll tell you all about it.

For now, that’s it. If you are an old reader, welcome back. If you are visiting the site for the first time, stick around and thank you for dropping by.