A pearl revealed in each and every trip
One of my favorite benefits of business travel is seeing new cities, towns and countries, and experiencing different cultures.
I’m in Scotland for business and today is Halloween. When I arrived here, I wasn’t sure if Halloween is celebrated in the UK or not. Oh yes it is, and for much longer than it’s been celebrated in North America.
A bit of history:
The one thing I want to do the most after getting off a long international flight is to brush out my hair. It feels plastered to my head after being against the seat for many hours. No comb in the business class kit is ever going to get through my thick hair.
I flew into the Birmingham, UK airport and headed to the ladies’ room. I thought I could fluff out my hair with my fingers. Even that’s better than flat-head. 
But look – they have a hair curler/straightener! Just £1 for 90 seconds of a hot wand to run through your hair and you’ll look like the beauty in the photo, even coming off of an international flight!
Interested? Not me! I have never shared a hair brush. Never sharing hair instruments was right up there with wearing clean underwear every day, according to my mom.
What do you think, ladies? Would you use this?
Gumball-looking machines abound in the Birmingham, UK airport. I haven’t put money into and cranked the handle of a gumball machine in years, but I did so today. And I cost me £1 to do so.
While the majority of my liquids are in my checked bag (yes, I had to check my bag for my 15-day multi-city, multi-weather travels), I still had three small bottles of hand lotion and nasal spray in my laptop bag . . . and no 
clear plastic bag to put them in. The 3oz / 100ml restriction on liquids in carry-on bags applies here also, and I was unsure if UK security is easing up on the plastic bag rules like the US TSA seems to silently be doing.
My neighbors must really wonder about who lives in our house.
They rarely see me in the light of day. When I am at home, which lately has been only about one or two weekends a month, I walk the dog late in the evening. When I leave by car, it’s from inside our garage. The same goes for my husband … dog walks and car trips, though he is home more than I am. The neighbors see our dog more than they see either of us, as Toby loves to lie on the front lawn soaking up the Florida sunshine and watching the kids walk home from school.
Growing up, everyone’s house seemed to have a name. Schaeffer’s house, Freda’s house, the crabby lady’s house. Do they call our house the Dog-with-no-Parents House? I’ll see people look into our glass front doors as they’re walking by, probably thinking to themselves “Does anyone really live here?” Read more of this article »
I was randomly picked to go through a full body scanner at Chicago’s O’Hare airport today. This is my first visit to a controversial “what is security really seeing?” machine.
I never had one iota of a thought of what the security people were seeing on their cameras. My only thought during the experience was how lucky I happened to be to have full body scanner-appropriate clothes on! And as I walked away from the machine, all I could think of what how my wardrobe on travel days is now going to have even more planning around it.
Lately, I have a few trips to Scotland, with two more scheduled before the end of the year. While I’m “across the pond”, I’m more worried about driving on the opposite side of the road than I am about any terror incident. So I was a bit surprised when I read about the U.S. State Department’s Travel Advisory for Europe.
If you have any European travel in the near future, the government is not asking you to cancel your plans. They just want you to use some common sense. Watch out for packages on the subway, don’t be afraid to alert local authorities about suspicious activity, and most importantly, register your trip with the State Department. I wish you all safe travels, but if something were to happen while abroad, the State Department will have an easier time reaching you if you are registered. I just did for my next Scotland trip.
So use some common sense out there, but still have fun. I’ll spend more time worrying about how to exit all of those roundabouts!
The latest edition of Executive Travel Magazine offers up “Tips for Coping from Very Frequent Hotel Guests“. I offered up a few on my favorite tips for hotel living:
Traveling is a lifestyle some can’t imagine giving up. “Even after 25 years of business travel, I still love walking into a hotel that I’ve never been in before,” …
Read the full article on their site …
I think this hotel amenity is in a no-win situation – the bathroom scale. While a scale isn’t a common-place hotel amenity, I have been seeing them in various hotels. I just wonder how many people really use it?
I may get on the scale once just to compare its accuracy to my home scale. If it shows a higher number than my scale at home, then I discount its accuracy. Surely I haven’t eaten THAT much during my trip!
If the scale shows a lower number, I’ve love to believe it but would most likely be skeptical of the number. Hence, a no-win situation.
I’ve taken a poll of several female travelers and hear the same thing from them. So weigh in here (pun intended) and post a comment if you use a hotel’s bathroom scale.
