Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need Read Free

Express traveler’s checks, you can call for an immediate refund.
    FIRST TRAVELER : But we don’t even know how to operate a telephone!
    SECOND TRAVELER : I don’t even remember which Traveler I am! I think I’m the Second Traveler!
    FIRST TRAVELER : No! I’m the Second Traveler!
    KARL MALDEN
(to camera):
American Express traveler’s checks. A lot of people never even figure out how to cash them.
WORKING WITH A TRAVEL AGENT
    You should definitely have a travel agent. Why go through all the hassle of dealing with airlines, hotels, and rental-car agencies yourself, only to see the arrangements get all screwed up, when with just a single phone call you can have a trained professional screw them up for you?
    No, seriously, travel agents are wonderful. At least mine is. Her name is Ramona, and I’d literally be lost without her. I’ll be on a business trip, and I’ll wake up in a strange hotel room in bed with traces of mini-bar cheese 6 in my hair, and in a disoriented panic I’ll call Ramona, and we’ll have the following conversation:
    ME : Where am I?
    RAMONA
(checking her computer):
You’re in Houston.
    ME
(alarmed):
Why?
    RAMONA : You’re on a business trip.
    ME : Can I come home yet?
    RAMONA
(checking her computer):
No. You have to go to Detroit.
    ME
(very alarmed):
Detroit?
    RAMONA
(checking her computer):
And get that cheese out of your hair.
    I always do what Ramona says, because she has the computer. Ramona could ship me off to the Falkland Islands if she felt like it.
    Ramona also is good at attempting to explain the airline fare system, which is governed by a powerful, state-of-the-art computer that somebody apparently spilled a pitcher of Hawaiian Punch into the brain of, and it has been insane ever since. I base this statement on the fact that if I fly from Miami to, for example, Tampa, the round-trip fare is often hundreds of dollars more than what it costs to fly from Miami to, say, Singapore. This makes no sense. Singapore is in a completely different
continent
, 7 whereas Tampa is so close to Miami that our stray bullets frequently land there. And what is worse, there is never just
one
fare to Tampa. There are
dozens
of them, and they are constantly mutating, and the more Ramona explains them to me, the more disoriented I become.
    ME : I need to go to Tampa on Thursday.
    RAMONA
(checking her computer):
No, not Thursday.
    ME : No?
    RAMONA : No, because there’s a $600 penalty if you fly on a Thursday during a month whose name contains two or more vowels following two straight quarters of increased unemployment
unless
you are a joint taxpayer filing singly with two or more men on base
provided
that you spend at least one Saturday night in a hotel room within twelvefeet of a malfunctioning ice machine
and
you undergo a ritual initiation ceremony wherein airline ticket agents dance around you and put honey-roasted peanuts up your nose.
    ME : Book me on the Singapore flight.
RENTING A CAR
    Renting a car offers many attractive advantages to the traveler: independence, convenience, dependability, and a sudden, massive lowering of the IQ. I know what I’m talking about here. I live in Miami, and every winter we have a huge infestation of rental-car drivers, who come down here seeking warm weather and the opportunity to make sudden left turns without signaling across six lanes of traffic into convenience stores. 8 My wife and I have affectionately nicknamed these people “Alamos,” because so many of them seem to rent their cars from Alamo, which evidently requires that every driver leave several major brain lobes as a deposit. We’ll be driving along, and the driver in front of us will engage in some maneuver that is boneheaded even by the standard of Miami (official motoring motto: “Death Before Yielding”), and we’ll shout, “Look out! Alamos!” We’re tempted to stay off the highways altogether during tourist season, just stockpilefood and spend the entire winter huddled in our