Having invited readers to send us their cherished travel tips, we’ve been supplied with a great many tactics and strategies of considerable value. Here are the best of their recent tips:
– If you and a travel companion or friend are both changing dollars into foreign currency at the same time, writes a reader from New York, pool your money, have one of you get the exchange and then split the foreign currency. You’ll save half the charge that each of you would otherwise have paid.
– Try getting a discount on your hotel room by offering to pay in cash, advises a reader from Philadelphia. A hotel reservationist suggested this approach when the reader recently phoned to reserve and asked if there was a discount for her AARP or AAA membership, as many hotels do in the United States. The response from London was that the only discount they could offer was 10 percent if the reader paid in cash!
– A $10 temporary membership to the Hawaii State Public Library system, according to a gentleman from New Jersey, will enable you to use computers to send e-mail, access the Internet or do your online banking while staying in any or all of the Hawaiian islands.
– By accessing www.londonbb.com, says a woman from Seattle, you can find single rooms in Londoners’ homes at affordable prices.
– The best prepaid phone cards for use in a foreign country are ones you purchase locally while in that country, advises a traveler from Pittsburgh. Where do you find them? Souvenir shops and newsstands. How do you use them? By simply going to a local phone booth.
