Traveling on a budget isn’t rocket science. However, there are a few budget-travel tips not everyone thinks about. This quick list of little known ways to travel on a budget can boost your savings next time you take a vacation.

1. Find out the real off season.

You’ve probably heard that travel is way cheaper in the off season and considerably cheaper in the shoulder season. The problem with that piece of advice is that we often don’t think about what the off and shoulder seasons are for particular areas.

In Florida, for instance, the summer is actually more like the off season. Most travelers hit the beaches in the spring and winter, when it’s cold in the Midwest and North. So, you can save quite a bit by skipping spring break in Miami and going to Florida in July, instead.

Many countries and particular areas have different off seasons than you’d expect, so don’t just make assumptions – find out!

2. Get there early.

Not to the museum, necessarily, though this can be helpful. Rather, get to the airport and train station early.

One of the top ways travelers add unnecessary expenses to their travel budgets is by getting to the airport too late and having to pay hefty fines to reschedule their flights. Plus, it’s just less stressful if you get there earlier than you need to.

3. If you’re driving somewhere, service your car before you go.

Breaking the budget with an unexpected engine problem is no way to start or end your vacation! If you’re driving any considerable distance at all, make sure to have your car serviced before you go.

This includes things like checking the tires, making sure belts aren’t too worn, and changing the oil. Even if your car seems to be in relatively good shape, a minor issue now could be a major one in a few hundred miles!

Plus, when you’re still home, you can use your favorite mechanic that you know gives you good value. If you’re stranded in a city you don’t know well – or, heaven forbid, in the middle of nowhere! – you’ll probably end up paying more for services because of necessity or ignorance.

4. Book a cruise.

So a cruise might sound like one expensive vacation, but it can actually be pretty affordable. Lots of cruise lines today cater to budget travelers.

The best part about a cruise is that you can know exactly what you’re going to spend before you get started. As long as you steer clear of the extras at the spa and casino, you can stick to a really structured budget.

The same thing may be true of certain all-inclusive resorts if you can find a good deal. The point is that with any all-inclusive vacation, there aren’t lots of unexpected fees to worry about. Plus, these vacations tend to be relatively stress-free because you don’t have to drive from place to place for entertainment.

5. Use gift certificates

Use sites like restaurant.com, groupon.com and livingsocial.com to save on meals. For instance, on restaurant.com, you can find $50 gift certificates for $25 or less. You have to buy a certain amount of food to use them, but they’re mostly worth it. Another bonus is that the certificates are normally for locally-run restaurants and smaller chains, though some larger national chains participate, too.

Just go to the website, type in the zip code of the place you’ll be staying, and see which coupons you can get. If you’ve got time before your vacation, sign up for restaurant.com newsletters to get even better deals – sometimes up to 80% off the original cost of the gift certificate!

6. Splurge on a recent guidebook.

It might seem like one simple way to save is to buy a used guidebook that’s a few years old. Guidebooks can be relatively expensive, after all. However, this is not a great idea. A recent guidebook from at least the previous year will direct you to the best entertainment and restaurants that are really in your price range.

With an old guidebook, you might run into outdated pricing or get stuck choosing a less-than-appealing option because the restaurant you wanted to go to is closed. Ordering guidebooks online can save you money even on newer options.

Debra Wilson is a social media advocate at CreditDonkey. With summer just around the corner, she’s been blogging extensively about travel rewards and how using promotional credit cards can earn you free flights and hotel stays.

Jatlag is caused by timezone differences which affect your internal body clock. Your body is used to your natural day (active)/night(sleep) cycle, and knows by itself whether its night or day without it having to be exposed to sun light in the first place. When you’re around the globe however…meet jetlag – and it can take up to several days for your body to recover!

Here are some tips and steps you might want to take before and during your flight, which will help you to minimize almost to the point of no existence the jetlag effect.

• Rest well before the flight. This works very if you’ve booked a morning flight, but if you have an evening flight, try to keep your daily activities to a reasonable energetic consumption level. It’s a good idea to exercise, since it will reinvigorate your body, but by no means should you excessively exercise.
• Change bedtime hours. Whether you travel to the east or to the west makes a lot of difference. For example, if you travel from London to New York, you’ll experience a shorter day than that with which you bodyclock is currently used to, and the other way around to the east, where it will seem longer. A good tip would be to try to sleep earlier if you travel to the east and later if you’re destination is west.
• Keep yourself hydrated. Because of the high pressure in the plane during flight, you’ll find that your body becomes severely dehydrated, which you can easily combat by asking the stewardess for decently sized water bottle, 2L should do the trick.
• Don’t drink alcohol! Related to the above tip, don’t take advantage of your airlines complementary alcoholic beverages, since it will do you a lot more harm than good, no matter what you might think. Alcohol severely dehydrates, and deprives sleep and rest.
• Set your watch according to the local destination. When your flight boards your destination, don’t forget to set your watch according to the local time and stick to it, not to the one your internal clock tells you.
• Don’t sleep during the flight unless your flight arrives in the morning. Although it might seem very hard in a 13 hour flight from Paris to Hongkong, but try to keep yourself awake and entertained – work, read, study, watch airline movies, whatever you can to keep yourself distracted. It will be worth it in the long run, when you’ll arrive and have a nice sleep during the destination’s nightime.
• Anchor sleep. A minimum amount of 4 hours during destination night time is highly recommended – the interval is called “Anchor sleep”. Try to sleep the same amount of hours you normally would back home, you can solve your 8 hour sleep/day cycle by taking naps which will help you balance the jetlag.
• Sun light exposure. When you arrive at your destination, it would be a good practice to stay in the sunlight for as long possible, since the sun’s exposure is a natural balance for your internal body clock.

Happy traveling!

[image via virginia.edu]

If you’re traveling to Argentina and what to see as much as you can of the beautiful Argentinian landscape, you should need to rent a car.  The country is vast and the roads aren’t the best, and without renting a car, you’ll soon find yourself battling frustration and stranded time. Here’s a few tips I wanted to share on how to rent a car in Argentina on the cheap and fast, which I learned and tested during my 2009, 10 day trip to Argentina.

1. You don’t need an international permit

The only thing you need is your driver’s license issued by your home country, a credit card and to be aged 21.

Driving is probably the easiest and cheapest way to see the sites. It allows you spend time with your family away from tourists and you can take your own time at each site. Plus you can always pop back to your hotel during the day if you want to cool down from the sun, relax, play some fun online games such as Partypoker or just take a little siesta. The only downside to renting a car is the map reading, so make sure you have a GPS handy

2. Don’t book online – scout for rentals in person

Don’t try to book a rental online or through a third party. It’s not only a lot more expensive, but you’ll also find yourself paying up to 50% more on commissions. Go in the city, scout for some rent a car agencies and hit up the people there in person.

3. Negociate

Renting a car in Argentina is very expensive, somewhere around $45-$60 for a normal sedan. Good thing is that it’s no fixed, so don’t be afraid to bargain with the agency. Don’t settle with the first agency you step foot it – browse a few, remember the prices for each one, and leverage each negociation with “the other place was cheaper, can you match their offer?” routine. Ask for a discount if you’re renting for a period longer than a week as well.

4. Know how much you need to travel

Most Argentinian rentals work on a 200km/day standard, and everything above that will cost extra, by the kilometer. Know how much you need to travel, if your plan is to drive less than 200km a day, you can easily book anything, but if you’re going for 200km+, consider renting a car that doesn’t charge on the distance.

5. Keep your tank full

I need to emphasis this – always keep a full tank or at least 3/4! Argentina is a very big country, remember. It’s rough and wild outside the city, so don’t expect those directions on the map to be extremely accurate. What you may think is a town, where you’ll hopefully find some gasoline, can actually just be an abandoned mine or something in the likes. Be prepared, fill her up. The last you need is to run out of gas in the middle of the desert .

6. Have your papers in order

Checkpoints and police controls are an often thing in Argentina, so keep all your licenses, passport, registration and so on as handy as possible, so you can turn them over and get on with your business as soon as possible and without complications.

7. Be very, very careful on the road

Argentinian traffic is hectic to say the least. You’ll find that nobody respects millage limits, locals often going for 100km/h in a 50km/h zone. There’s also very few traffic signs or lights, and a driving tourist used to a more orderly manner of traffic might find himself extremely confused. Be sure to be extremely vigilant, thus, especially in the city. Keep an eye for loony pedestrians and Argentinian drivers.

Journey towards the stars. Artist: Nicolas Bouvier.

Talented game designer, Nicolas Bouvier, has now become famous for his well crafted sci-fi sketches, most of which depicting space scenery and marvelous ship concepts. Check out more of Nicolas’ concepts here.

Exploring the depths of the seven seas. Artist: Jeffrey Turley.

The ocean deeps are still an enigma for a lot of scientists, with thousands, maybe millions, of potential undiscovered new species of marine life. This aquatic vehicle could be used for archeology, research, exploration and, why not, travel. Jeffrey Turley, the artist, works down at Walt Disney Animation Studios, and according to him he turns up with work like this on a regular basis, just to keep his art fresh. More of Turley’s work.

Riding the skies. Artist: David Levy.

Seemingly like a scene from well animated anime flick, David Levy’s design impresses through unconventionality and imagination. The concept of space pirate ships have long been applied, but this is just awesome! More of Levy’s work.

Exploring foreign worlds. Artist: Ben Mauro.

Designed by the very young, 23-year old artist, Ben Mauro, this intriguing concept tries to paint a scene on how future foreign world exploration will look like. See more of Mauro’s work.

Space commerce. Artist: Michal Jelinek

This is a great representation of future space cargo ship. Its main purpose would be to deliver goods from corner of the galaxy to the other. Concept by Michal Jelinek. More of his work here.

Space travel for simpletons. Artist: Joel Carlo Aymat.

This weird, clover shaped spacecraft has been designed by artist Joel Carlo Aymat as a simple space carrier for people, wanting to go from point A to point B at lightspeed. “It’d be like the Toyota FT-HS of space travel!” said Aymat, about his contraption. More of Aymat’s work.

The future is going retro. Artist: Jake Parker.

A big fan of pre-WWII aircraft design, artist Jake Parker designed this pretty cool sketch of a very powerful byplane, docking on a floating island. That’s Peter Pan material for ya. More of Parker’s work.

The war machine. Artist: Theodor Waern.

This frightening concept depicts the war machine of the future. Inspired by Hollywood flicks Terminator and Aliens, Swedish designer Theodor Waern sketched a really well inspired death bringer. Dubbed the “Ferro,” Waern’s war machine is equipped with weapons and can carry up to eight passengers and a pilot. More of Waern’s work.

5. Vasco da Gama Bridge – Portugal

The bridge Vasco da Gama is the longest bridge in Europe. It consist of cable-stayed bridges, roads and bridges surrounded by the river extends to the Crown River near the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. Its total length is of 17.2 kilometers, of which 0.829 kilometres (0.5 miles) of the main bridge, 11.5 kilometers (7.1 miles) The bridges, and 4.8 kilometers (3.0 miles) of dedicated access routes. Its purpose is to alleviate congestion on the bridge to the other Lisbon (25 abril de bridge), and previously to join the radiation from the highways is not relevant to Lisbon.

4. Chesapeake Bay Bridge – USA

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge, also known as the Gulf Bridge, is one of the biggest and most important bridges in North America. In short, it’s a major bridge over the double in the U.S. state of Maryland, along the Chesapeake Bay. It provides the connection between the state and the east and west coast regions. At 4.3 miles (7 km) in length, may extend the original in the world over the longest continuous steel structures in the water when it opened in in 1952. Bridge officially name (William Preston hot, warm, Jr. Memorial Bridge after William Preston, son, Governor of the State of Maryland, carried out construction.

3. King Fahd Causeway – Bahrein

King Fahd Causeway is a multiple dike – bridge combination connecting Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and the island nation of Bahrain.

A construction agreement signed on July 8, 1981 led to construction beginning the next year. The cornerstone was laid on November 11, 1982 by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and Sheikh Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa of Bahrain; construction continued until 1986, when the combination of several bridges and dams were completed. The causeway officially opened for use on November 25, 1986.

The four-lane road (2×12.3 metres (40 ft)) is 25 kilometres (15.5 mi) long. Five bridges with an overall length of 12,430 metres (40,781 ft) were built using 350,000 cubic metres (460,000 yd³) of concrete along with 147,000 metric tons of reinforced steel.

2. Bridge Donghai – China

Donghai Bridge (literally “Eastern Sea Great Bridge”) is the longest cross-sea bridge in the world and the longest bridge in Asia. Construction was finished on December 10, 2005. This marvelous bridgehas a total length of about 32.5 kilometers (20.2 miles) and connects Shanghai and external Yangshan deep-water port in China. Over the bridge is a bridge to a low level. There is also cable-stayed doors to allow passage of large ships, with a greater extent than 420 m.

1. Lake Pontchartrain Causeway – USA

[digg-reddit-me]The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, or the Causeway, consists of two parallel bridges that are the longest bridges in the world by total length.[2] These parallel bridges cross Lake Pontchartrain in southern Louisiana. The longer of the two bridges is 23.87 miles (38.42 km) long. The bridges are supported by over 9,000 concrete pilings. The two bridges feature bascule spans over the navigation channel 8 miles (13 km) south of the north shore. The southern terminus of the Causeway is in Metairie, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. The northern terminus is at Mandeville, Louisiana.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder or at least that’s how the saying goes. For a few people, beauty, is a bit more relative the people perceive it. Someone might consider an abstract painting horrific, while the other might find it simply enchanting. However there’s something truly magical about something that, we can all agree upon, bridges the barrier between grotesque and serene.

A prison is a symbol of entrapment, torture and suffering. A hotel is mostly associated with comfort, relaxation and escape. Put the two face to face and you’ll find little, to no similarities, however by combining them you can achieve a certain level of beauty and bliss, that surfaces only in the weirdest of places. I mean think about it. Hotel + Prison, Prison + Hotel. I guess inmates would love to serve their time in hotel, but about travel guests lodging in a prison? Here’s 3 of the world’s weirdest, but at the same time beautiful, prisons converted into hotels.

1. Four Season Hotel – Istanbul, Turkey

Maybe the most famous jail house turned luxury hotel is the 65-room Four Seasons Istanbul, which up until 1969 was the Sultanahmet Jail, a detention center for writers, journalists, artists and dissident intellectuals awaiting trial at a nearby courthouse in central Istanbul.

The building’s exterior of Turkish neo-classic architecture was maintained, while contemporary glass additions were created to connect the series of buildings that frame an open courtyard, adding natural light to the hotel’s interior. This hotel offers an atmosphere of personal attention and ease that is unprecedented in Istanbul.

More at http://www.fourseasons.com/istanbul/

2. Breakwater Lodge – Cape Town, South Africa

Once a 19th century prison, the South African former notorious correctional facility Breakwater Lodge, is now a vibrant tourist location. This 1859-built structure with castle-like ramparts on the glitzy Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in the heart of Cape Town, is the country’s first jail-turned-hotel.

More at http://www.breakwaterlodge.co.za/

3. Malmaison – Oxford, UK

If an inmate of Her Majesty’s Prison in Oxford were to pay a return visit to his former clink today, he might come away wishing he’d committed his crime 40 years later. The castle-like walls, built for William the Conqueror in 1071, remain; as do the three-inch-thick steel doors in the cell blocks. But the prison’s name has been changed to the Malmaison and conditions have improved dramatically. The House of Correction gym features has state-of-the-art exercise equipment, and high tea, not corporeal punishment, is served up in the visitor’s room.

Back in2005 the famous Malmaison hotel chain turned the oldest prison in Britain into one of the classiest boutique hotels in the county. Quite a makeover. Instead of changing the old look, the designers created a jail house theme by keeping the wrought iron stairwell and many of the original jail bars and bare brick walls. Of course, the designers also added a modern touch and vibe to the retro, creepy theme. A soft mood lighting and original pieces of art are just a few additions. The dining area is now a chic brasserie with a menu featuring steak tartare and fillet of sea bass, and the old cells feature plasma TVs, heated slate-stone bathrooms, plush velvet curtains and fully stocked mini-bars.

More at http://www.malmaison-oxford.com/

4. Liberty Hotel – Boston, USA

Oh, the irony. The Charles Street Jail, in Boston, was one of the countries most infamous prisons, dating from the middle of the 19th century. It started it slow decay as prison, in the mid 20th century, before finally closing its doors at the beginning of the 1990′s. But from the ashes, a gorgeous new 298-room hotel was raised. Opened in September 2007 after a $150 million renovation, 18 of its rooms are set within the high granite walls of the 1851-built main prison, which has as its centerpiece a towering light-filled 90-foot-high lobby rotunda.

More at http://www.libertyhotel.com/

5. Hotel Katajanokka – Helsinki, Finland

To find one of Europe’s classiest prison hotels, you must cross the Baltic to Helsinki, Finland, and check into Hotel Katajanokka, a tall red-brick structure on a narrow peninsula close to the domed Uspenski Cathedral in the center of the city. This was the Helsinki county prison for 150 years until it closed down in 2002; it’s now a 102-room boutique inn run by Best Western, with a swish bare-brick restaurant called Jailbird. Which room to book? Ask for the private cell where former Finnish president Risto Ryti was jailed by the Soviets at the end of World War Two.

More at http://www.bwkatajanokka.fi

6. Hotel Loewengraben – Lucerne, Switzerland

[digg-reddit-me]The Jail Hotel Loewengraben in old town Lucerne, Switzerland, functioned as a prison right up until 1998. Right about the same year it re-opened as a small, clean, unfussy boutique hotel. The rooms have bars on the windows, the doors tiny slots to push food through, and the communal areas are decorated with prison memorabilia. And just in case you missed the joke, the hotel bar is called Alcatraz. Not exactly four seasons material, but fun enough to get welcomed in the list.

More at http://www.jailhotel.ch/

10. Khaju Bridge

9. Pont du Gard

8. Bridge of Sighs

7. Iron Bridge

6. Covered Bridges

5. Ponte Vecchio

4. The Wind and Rain Bridge

3. Brooklyn Bridge

2. Tower Bridge

1. Golden Gate Bridge

via: Neatorama

In what’s a new and bizarre new technique of fighting, the new alarmant, New York bedbugs wide scale infestation, man’s best friend has been specially trained to sniff out the critters. Radar the beagle and Taz the Australian kelpie are just two of the ever expanding pack of highly trained canines. Chances are you’ve seen one of them in a flat building or hotel, but you’ve more then certain didn’t give too much thought to their unique talents.

“We are inundated with requests from hotels and apartment owners,” said Carl Massicott, the mastermind behind Advanced K9 Detectives, which has six dogs working steadily and two more in training.

“It’s difficult to keep up with the demand,”

The city’s Department of Housing, Preservation and Development says 6,889 infestation complaints were logged in the fiscal year ending last June, and 2,008 building owners were hit with summonses. In 2004, there were just 537 calls about bedbug infestations, and only 82 landlords were slapped with violations.