I’m back from vacation!

While I was on the road that led away from the snow and towards the sandy beaches I started tweeting a few travel tips.  I picked up a few more along the way, so I thought I’d share them all with you.

Laura’s Travel Tips:

Travel Tip #1:  Do not pass by a clean airport bathroom stall thinking the next one will be cleaner. It won’t.  (I really can’t stress this point enough.)

Travel Tip #2: Your pilot will never be as cool as Joe and Brian Hackett.

Okay, this random reference to a 1990s sitcom might need a little more explanation. A few weeks ago I was shopping at BJ’s for a keg of Diet Coke, wheel of cheese and four new tires (as one does) when I stumbled across the rack of DVDs. There, for the bargain price of $29.99 was Wings – The Complete Series. Ten disks and 172 glorious episodes about the quirky group of people who work at an airport in Nantucket.  I’ve been obsessed ever since, and couldn’t help comparing my travel experiences to those of the people at Tom Nevers Field.

Which leads me to my next tip…

Travel Tip #3: Never fly on Sandpiper Air. (If you don’t understand that reference, contact me and I’ll let you borrow my Wings DVDs.  Not for a while, though.  I still have about 35 episodes left.)

Travel Tip #4: Leave a coast with ice caps and go to a coast with jet skis.

This tip probably doesn’t need a lot of explanation if you’ve lived in the Northeast this winter.  In a nutshell, I can’t take any more snow!  It was lovely when it was snowing in December. It was expected when it was snowing in January.  Then came February when it snowed every day except four. That’s 24 days of snow if you’re keeping track. And not just light, fluffy snow. I’m talking blizzards.

Then came March.

March is a month when a dusting of snow isn’t unusual, but it also isn’t the norm.  Well, in the winter of 2015, snow became the norm.  In fact, I stopped watching the weather reports in early March.  I just assumed it would snow and wore my boots and heavy winter coat every day.

And I was never overdressed.

Travel Tip #4.5: Just because you go to a coast where jet skis are available doesn’t mean you should actually attempt to jet ski. (Of course this tip may be personal to me. After a lovely week’s vacation, I was getting ready for work the other day and broke my toe on my bathroom doorjam. If I’m that klutzy in my own home, imagine the kind of damage I could do on a jet ski.)

Travel Tip #5:  Unplug and experience the moment.

With that tip, I turned off my phone and didn’t sign on to Twitter for a week. That may not mean anything to most people, but I’m a bit of a Twitter addict (come follow me @LauraCKilmartin!) and a week is a long time in the Twitterverse. But, I have to say that I didn’t miss it at all.  It’s amazing how many things there are to pay attention to when your head isn’t bent over a tiny screen looking for kitten videos to retweet.

Since I was unplugged, I had more time to devote to the following:

Travel Tip #6:  Bring a pile of good books.  I read 3 1/2 books while I was on vacation. Two were fantastic: Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline and Nantucket Nights by Elin Hilderbrand.

Here’s a random picture when I attended Elin’s book signing for Silver Girl. (Also a terrific read.)

The 1/2 book that I have now almost finished is The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.  I’m loving this book, too, partly because it’s so far outside the genres I usually read.

For those math majors reading my blog, you’ll notice that I have only accounted for 2 1/2 of the 3 1/2 books I read. That’s because I really disliked one of the books, but I’m not going to publicly shame it here. It’s amazing how sensitive I’ve become to other authors’ feelings since I’ve received a few unkind reviews of my own.

So, I think those are my travel tips.  Do you have any to share?