Summary: With holiday travel season approaching, we talk about staying sane while travelling over the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year holiday time. Family can be stressful enough, but the huge numbers of people doing "vacation travel" over late November, December and early January definitely adds lots of stress to family events. And nobody needs more of that. If you can avoid Christmas holiday travel, then make sure you do. It's the busiest, most expensive time to jump on a plane. Airports are horrendously busy, there's likely to be more congestion, less turn-around time for planes and less slack for the airline staff. If you have to fly, book now. Airline prices really aren't going to get any cheaper, so if you're going to book a flight and you haven't already, you may as well do it now. The best holiday travel guide tip, is to travel earlier, stay later. http://www.farecompare.com/articles/holiday-travel-2009-guide-for-buying-cheap-holiday-flights/ Farecompare had some really interesting stats on when people flew and how much the tickets cost over the last few years. Pack light (one bag!) and consider posting your gifts ahead of time. It'll help you avoid the Christmas shopping rush and, depending on your airline, might actually save you a big chunk of cash on bag-handling fees. Now, of course, this could get quite expensive depending on where you are and where you're going but it's definitely worth looking into. Electronic gift certificates and things like that are also going to be a great way to get around the weight issue. It's hard to lose an email. If you're travelling within the US, WorldNomads (our providers) can insure you if you're travelling more than 100km from home. We like them because you can sign up and extend from anywhere and they do ultra-short term packages too.
