Essays - Lara's Top Ten Travel Tips

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In the first 7 months of 2000, Lara travelled to Europe 7 times, once to Central America, and once to China, as well as numerous trips within the US and Canada.

1. Learn how to sleep on a plane. This is of the utmost importance. If you have to knock yourself out on Valium, so be it. Either that or make sure you are very sleepy beforehand (a hangover sometimes helps).

2. If you see that the person next to you has no book, be sure to immediately feign sleep or heavy interest in whichever book you are reading (unless they are really cute). Also good to have some headphones handy which you can put on your head after takeoff if the previous two ideas do not work. Bookless people always want to drink lots of small bottles of liquor and tell you all about their lives which makes it hard to have a restful trip.

3. If your plane is cancelled, resign yourself. Be it weather, a strike, or mechanical difficulties, there is just nothing you can do. Resignation is the hardest thing to have in these circumstances, and I have not yet totally mastered it, but yelling and getting upset takes a lot of energy which you might need for the upcoming concert (if you ever get there).

4. If there is turbulence, and you are like me and get white knuckled, wide eyed, and can barely refrain from screaming "we’re gonna die!!" try to look around and gain comfort from the extremely calm people who are either chatting happily or sleeping even as their drinks hit the ceiling.

5. Do not take KLM. (please see "Why not to take KLM")

6. If you are 6 ft tall and long legged like me, try to learn to be able to sleep, or at least be comfortable in all sorts of contorted positions. DO NOT imagine that by getting an aisle seat you will be better off - invariably the drink cart will be a very rude awakening when it hits your leg at what feels like warp speed, and you will never get an apology or even a backwards glance from the driver of said cart.

7. Do not be misled by airlines advertising that their econo class has more room. No one, not even the American, Canadian, or Northern European companies (where people are rather bigger) build their econo class for anyone over 5 ft. 6. The only exception is the Delta Shuttle, which, naturally, you only have to be on for 40 minutes.

8. If your suitcase is lost, don’t panic. Mine has been lost around 10 times in the past 2 years and it always comes, sometimes too late for the concert, but it is seemingly never totally lost. After a day, be sure to call the airline and get them to pay for lots of nice new clothes.

9. When you arrive at your destination, pay absolutely no attention to the thing people call jetlag. If you normally go to bed at midnight, go to bed at midnight. Be on the same time as their sun. Jetlag is all in the mind. It can conveniently be used as a great excuse, however. There is a popular notion that it takes an day to adjust for every hour you change, which is complete bunk, but this way you can, say, go to Europe and be there 6 days and still complain at having to get up in the morning.

10. Smokers going to China or similar exceedingly far destination: Take Nicorette!

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