TRAVEL

What Travel Insurance Actually Protects Travel insurance is not one product. All-inclusive policies usually include coverage for trip cancellation and interruption, emergency medical assistance, emergency medical evacuation, travel delay and baggage protection. Medical and evacuation benefits tend to be most important on the road, since few domestic health plans offer much coverage outside the home country, and evacuations from back-country areas can be in the six figures. Cancellation protection reimburses you for already paid, nonrefundable costs should one of the

There is a certain sensibility that distinguishes a cultural encounter from a sightseeing jaunt. Sightseeing is a matter of depositing you get off the tour bus, take out your camera and snap a shot of the camels, then get right back on. The best cultural encounters leave a residue: a new perspective on how people live grieve fets, and make sense of things. And the best of these settings have a certain sensibility in common. They are locations in which

Italy has a problem: it’s a common belief that the lovelier the country, the pricier the stay. Venice’s waterway, Tuscany’s grape farms, and the ruins in Rome all sell for luxury, but Italy’s true essence is found away from the main streets – in casual restaurants, in small villages not marked out as attractions in travel brochures, and train rides that cost less than three cups of cappuccino. Travellers who watch their wallet have to figure out not so much

Travel is one of life’s great pleasures and one of life’s more unpredictable undertakings. Flights are canceled. Luggage disappears. Illnesses have the worst timing. Accidents occur in strange places away from home. For most travelers, it’s not a matter of if something will go wrong at some point in their traveling lives, but when, and how much it will cost when it does. Travel insurance is there to answer that second part – to ensure that the financial consequences of

One of the best challenges in travel is traveling on a budget. It’s proof that you don’t need unlimited funds to have remarkable experiences, and that resourcefulness often leads to adventures that expensive itineraries cannot. But there are other kinds of mistakes that come with budget travel, different from the mistakes of the careless spender, that can take a carefully planned affordable trip and turn it into something much more expensive than you expected. These are not obscure pitfalls that

Plan With Breathing Space Start with dates, budget and pace rather than a list of places you want to see. Draw up a basic budget including transportation, accommodation, meals, activities and a 10 to 15 percent buffer for the unexpected. Book major pieces early enough to lock in decent prices, but leave room in the calendar so one late train doesn’t wreck the next three days. Flying midweek and on off-peak dates tends to mean thinner crowds and less in