Hot New Travel Accessories for Summer Travel

I will be discussing these products and others this Thursday at 11:15 AM on Let's Talk Live on NewsChannel 8/WJLA in Washington, DC. Tune in.

Keeping dry is the name of the travel accessory game this summer. Wet bags, designed with thick waterproof lining and sealed seams for on-to-go storage of your soaked stuff, are all the rage these days. Colorful fabrics make them both functional and fashionable.

Wilma the Whale is just one of the Roll Down Wet Bag designs offered by Planet Wise. With a quick zip, roll and a snap, Wilma and her sisters securely store clammy gear, with no worries of moisture leaking through. Made in the USA, they come in medium ($18.50) and large ($22.50) sizes. www.planetwiseuinc.com

Travel Happens, by Itzy Ritzy, is another wet bag line with razzle-dazzle designs.The bags are machine washable and eco-friendly. They retail for $17.95 and $21.95, depending on the size. The company also makes Snack Happens Reusable Snack & Everything Bags, perfect for storing drippy sandwiches, juicy fruit, and even toiletries. The 7 x 7 inch pouches sells for $9.99. www.itzyritzy.com


New AirQuart bags are strictly designed to get your liquids through airport security in a stylish fashion. The 9 1/2 x 7 inch transparent case is lined with a trendy trim and topped with an integrated zipper and wrist strap. The gusseted bottom expands for even more space. www.Flanabags.com
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On the other hand, sometimes, you just need to let off a little steam when traveling, particularly if your clothing is wrinkled. The Joy Mangano 900-Watt My Little Steamer and Go Mini Set ($49.95) lets you pump out the steam needed to get creases out of linens and cottons. No more relying on old hotel irons, which might leave a black stain on your white duds. www.hsn.com

Doing downward dog is another great way to blow off steam. If the lotus position and the locust are part of your daily repertoire, Manduka has a yoga mat that is perfect for traveling. The eKO SuperLite Mat ($40) weighs in at two pounds and can easily be folded to fit into carry-on luggage.



If you are of the age where reading glasses are a must, how about the specs on tony eye wear that's also comfortable nose wear? Scojo's Gels Collection, made with a lightweight flexible plastic, has designs for both men and women ($42.00-$48.00). www.scojo.com

Manic Punday or A Night at The Improv

I made my stand-up debut at The Improv in Washington, DC last week. Here's an excerpt from the routine, minus the ad libs. Video will be posted within a week.

There are two things you should know about me. One, I’m a travel writer and two, I have a pun fetish. I will consider this night a raging success even if I don’t get a single laugh....as long as I hear a lot of moaning and groaning. I love getting moans and groans while indulging fetishes.

Actually, last year, these two things came together when I did a story on the National Pun Festival in Austin. As part of the deal, I performed a two-minute riff complete puns about Russia and the Soviet Union. I PUTIN a good enough routine to finish Top 10. But my performance needed work. So, I decided to go to comedy school.

Anyway, people are fascinated by the fact that I am a travel writer. Everyone thinks I lead such a glamorous life....that I jet set around the world with a man in every port and a personal porter to carry my Louis Vuitton luggage. And sometimes, I do live the lifestyle of the rich and famous. But the fact is I am poor and unknown, and you’ll usually find me schlepping my own bags.

But the stereotype persists. And I blame those middle-aged white women who write those memoirs--you know the formula-- woman has a mid-life crisis, she throws caution to the wind and heads abroad. She goes eating, loving and preying on unsuspecting men around the world. She goes to Italy and buys a house under the Tuscan sun. And it goes without fail that a hunky man with washboard abs is involved, they live happily ever after, the end.

My stories don’t work that way, people. I go to Italy--my book title is Under the Tuscan Sunstroke.

I could write 50 Shades of Earl Grey, but that would be ..

a tease.

The chronicle of my travels to the developing world would inevitably be dubbed Bridget Jones' Diarrhea. Yeah, I think that would be pretty explosive.

But I won’t run on about that.

The point is, everyone says I should write a book. But my adventures really don’t have a common theme. It would be great if I were one of those women who have sex around the world.

Then, I could dub my book, The Vagina Travelogues. But I won’t beat around the bush. When it comes to what’s going on down here, I just don’t have loose lips.

Then there are those intrepid travel writers who climb Kilimanjaro or trek across Antarctica. That's not my thing. I mean, if I were to write a book about my exploits, it would have to called Adventure Travel for Weenies.

That said, I am not a total wimp. I traveled the world alone. I ridden horses in Montana; elephants in Thailand and camels in the Outback of Australia. I guess you can say I’ve experienced camel tow down under. One more--due to the heat, my camel and I had to stop for a Blizzard at the Dromedary Queen.

Maybe instead of writing a book, I should put together a mix tape of my travels.

This is the part where I do an audience sing-along. Fortunately, the audience came through.
Then I do a few more Russian puns and it's "thank you and good nyet."

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Manic Punday: Travel Au Naturel

What nationality is most likely to be naked on a beach? Expedia’s Flip Flop Report provides the naked truth. Germans top the list. Given my experiences at naked German spas, this comes as no surprise to me.

The Flip Flop Report resulted from a poll of 8,000 beach-goers worldwide. While topics ranged from safety concerns to favorite beach activity, I was most interested in the skinny on skinny dipping. The general findings--Europeans are most likely to bare it all, while Americans and Asians are more modest. In studying the results, it does seem that this "worldwide" poll skips South America. If that's the case, the omission of Brazilians may leave the results out of wax.

Archive Photo from the 1970s
 DDR Museum, Berlin

Nonetheless, let's dive into the numbers. Germans are the most brazen when it comes to baring it all.. Nearly one-fifth of all Germans polled report having gone Full Monty on the beach. While nearly half of the Americans surveyed say they feel either comfortable or neutral about beach nudity, the fact is, in real life, they are prudes. Only five percent of American beach-goers report letting it all hang out while hanging five or indulging in other water play. Meanwhile, only eight percent have ever sunbathed topless.

And who is most likely to go topless? Although the survey doesn’t make this clear, I assume this question was asked only of females. The survey says 40% of Danes are happy to go without tops or Danish pasties.  One-third of Italian women feel comfortable saying “arrivederci” to their bra*, while 31% of Norwegian women are happy to titillate.

While 73% of French beach-goers report being somewhat or very comfortable with topless beaches, they are among the least likely Europeans to go au naturel. Forty-two percent say they would never go out without a maillot or Speedo.

Ah, the Speedo. Let me be brief  No, no and NO. But 65% of those polled disagree with me. The French are most approving, with nine out of 10 saying oui oui to the wee wee frock. Italians are equally meatballs about the saucy suits**. Among those most disapproving of the Speedo (aside from me) are the Japanese and the Norwegians. According to the poll, American beach-goers are 50-50 when it comes to considering Speedos acceptable beachwear. However, I would deign to say that the pool of actual Speedos wearers in the U.S. of A. contains but a single digit..

*Explanation of double d'entendre: Bra is also a town in Italy, best known as the home of the Slow Food Movement.

**Baggy swim trunks are banned in French public pools as a matter of hygiene. According to a head pool attendant from Paris's 11th arrondissement,. only small, tight trunks (read Speedos) can be worn for swimming. The theory is that loose swimming shorts can collect sand, dust or beg bugs, all of which have the potential to disturb the water quality.. 

The Soundtrack of My Travels

Have you ever had an ear worm? You know the phenomenon. An ear worm is when you can't get a song out of your head. It plays incessantly in there, like a broken record.

I am most often plagued by ear worms when I travel. And it's no surprise.  According to one Dr. Vicky Williamson, a music psychologist at the University of London, ear worms are most likely to develop in moments of stress or at times when your mind has the freedom to wander. Both are common states-of-mind when away from home.

Thus, when I take a trip on the Trans-Siberian Express, I can't get Back in the U.S.S.R. out of my noggin. Every time I go to Phoenix, Arizona (all the way from Tacoma), Steve Miller Band's  Keep on Rockin' Me, Baby keeps knockin' around my head. And don't even get me started on Maria Muldaur's Midnight at the Oasis, which for decades has been triggered in my mind by the sight of camels and/or visits to the Middle East. For years, I thought the lyrics of said song started like this:

Midnight at the Oasis
Take Your Camel to Bed...
And I would sing this aloud in Jordan or Israel and people would look at me funny.  Take your camel to bed?  What kind of freak is this Maria Muldaur? Heck, no wonder they were looking at me funny.  I had to Google the lyrics.

Midnight at the oasis
Send your camel to bed (editor's note--oh). Shadows painting our faces.Traces of romance in our heads.

You don't have to answer. There's no need to speak.  I'll be your belly dancer, prancer And you can be my sheik

[Instrumental Interlude]

I know your Daddy's a sultan, A nomad known to allW. With 50 girls to attend him, they all send him....
Jump at his beck and call

But you won't need no harem, honey
When I'm by your side
And you won't need no camel, no no....When I take you for a ride

Come on, Cactus is our friend. He'll point out the way
Come on, 'til the evenin' ends, 'til the evening ends.

Tsk, tsk--dirty lyrics, Maria Muldaur.

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Anyway,  according to an article in The Guardian U.K, I did the right thing. I went to Google; I looked up the lyrics: I got closure and washed that ear worm right out of my hair. According to Dr. Ira Hyman, an expert in the study of ear worms (he wanted to be a gynecologist, but he didn't put enough time in the labia), "Choruses tend to get stuck in your head because they are the bit we know best. Because we don't know verses, the song remains unfinished. Unfinished thoughts are more likely to return." Finish the thought and ear worm be gone.

Dr. Hyman, who works at Western Washington University, also suggests we can dig ear worms out of our heads by distracting ourselves. Read a book. Not this one. though. Put together a piece of IKEA furniture. Or bake a cake. Of course, the latter remedy comes with its own ear worm side effects.

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark

All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

Would love to know what ear worms enter your head when you are on the go. Please write in.

The Inside Track on Romance of the Rails

Here's an excerpt from my upcoming article for Emirates Open Skies Magazine.

There's something about long-distance train travel that conjures images of intrigue, mystery and romance. But why trains? Certainly, when you board a plane, you don't deign to imagine you will encounter a femme fatale or a mysterious masculine nomad in your row of seats. Certainly, when heading off on a 12-hour drive in a car, thoughts of rest-stop romances are the last thing on one's mind. But trains... Why is it almost a fait accompli that our minds expressly orient themselves to intrigue and enchantment upon embarking on an extended train trip?

Perhaps one can blame Dame Agatha Christie for this mysterious affair of perceived style. After all, she was among the first authors and auteurs of the 20th century to set a sweeping stumper on the rails. Murder on the Orient Express, published in 1934, is an enigmatic whodunit  (spoiler alert: the whole train dun it) starring Christie’s ace detective Hercule Poirot.  

Stepping on the bandwagon,  Ethel White followed  up with The Wheels Spin in 1936. The tale is more familiarly known as The Lady Vanishes, released by Alfred Hitchcock in film form in 1938. In the book, the heroine, suffering from heat exhaustion, discovers an elderly travel companion missing from the train. Adventure ensues. Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (adapted from the Patricia Hightower book of the same name) has two passengers plotting criss-cross murders, whereby each is to knock off the other's bête noir. A more recent thriller-mystery set on a train is 2008's largely-overlooked Transsiberian. The film, starring Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer, adds modern-day gore to old-school mystery.

On the silver screen, though, romance on the rails often eclipses intrigue as a plot device. In many screenplays, young lovers meet on a train. There's 1995's Before Sunrise (the second sequel of which, Before Midnight, was released this summer). Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy hook up on a train, prefacing a 20-year odyssey of philosophizing and unapologetic profundity.  In Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), Cary Grant's character encounters the mysterious Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) on the 20th Century Limited from New York to Chicago. After adventures involving crop dusters, Tarascan statues, and Mount Rushmore, the two are seen together in an upper berth as their train zooms suggestively into a tunnel. THE END.

I often wonder how many of the creative types who have married romance and the rails have actually taken a lengthy train trip. Because if they did, perhaps some of the more fragile might end up like one Anna Karenina, who, at the end of her story, was literally wed to the tracks.   

As the aforementioned Transsiberian paints it,  the caravan plying the tracks between Beijing and Moscow is filled with babushkas and pensioners, assorted raggedy backpackers, dirty cops, and drug dealers.  On the Trans-Siberian (as I will stylistically refer to it) I traveled, I experienced nary a cop, dirty or otherwise, nor anyone trading in narcotics (not counting the train's doctor, that is). To clarify, though, rather than taking the "real" Trans-Siberian, the train on which one shares berths, baths, and board with Russian folk, I hopped one of the private excursion trains that has popped up post-Soviet Union.

Was there romance? Were there moments of transcendence?  Was there intrigue?  I won’t prematurely spill any beans, but I will say one lady (me) did temporarily vanish. Like the heroine of The Wheels Spin, I suffered from heat exhaustion prior to boarding the train. The malady struck in the Forbidden City. I headed to a Beijing hospital while the group headed to the train station.  I re-joined the group two days later in Mongolia, boarding the Trans-Siberian in Ulan Bator.

Just Another Manic Punday: Grey's Anatomy

True story.

I am receiving a 2 1/2-hour massage this weekend, which, parenthetically, is a short rubdown for me.
The therapist is focusing solely on my neck and shoulders. Usually, these body parts are quite resistant to pain. But when she hits a spot that has never been touched before (there's a lot of detailed work in a 2 1/2-hour upper body massage), I squeal in pain. "What muscle is that?" I query as I lay face down in the head cradle. "And what is it connected to?"

She tells me it is the infraspinatus muscle, which is attached to the humerus. I tell her I find nothing humerus about the situation.

Thank you and good night.

Just for Laughs: 9 Things to Know About Stand-Up Comedy

I always enjoy expanding my horizons. Usually, I do so by traveling the world. But when I am at home, I take classes. Last year, it was Russian. This spring, it was Italian. This summer, it's stand-up comedy.

Now, anyone who has read my stories about the naked German spa or has savored my punditry or has put up with my on-the-spot quips knows I have a sense of humor, however warped it may be. I can converse funny. I can write funny. I can quip funny. But performing funny--that, my friends, is a whole other ball of wax.

As I take classes at The Improv in DC, here are some lessons I am learning.

1. Set a premise. As you begin a routine, you have to let the audience know your persona. You're the neurotic Jewish girl. You're the woeful putz. You're the put-upon dad. The audience needs to know who you are up front to get the joke.

2. Believe the audience wants to like you.

3. Take a breath before you start. It will calm and compose you (supposedly).

4. Take liberties with the truth. To wit, when relating a real story, always attribute the funny line to yourself....even if someone else said it. There are no fact checkers in comedy.

5. Take it to the crazy. Find veins of humor in situations and explore them to the extreme.

6. Cut the crap. Delete extraneous exposition.

7- Use the Rhythm Method. Alternate between long and slow and slam, bam, thank you ma'am.

8. Beware of jokes based on news events. Sometimes, it's too soon to joke, and sometimes, the joke's already outdated..

9. Don't give the audience a chance to heckle you. Beware of asking the crowd questions, or pausing too long between thoughts.

If you are interested in how well I learn my lessons, please come to The Improv on August 7. But you are only invited if you promise to laugh with me, not at me.

Thank you and good night.