Tag: educational

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Product Reviews Tips

Why your family should consider travel insurance: a cautionary tale

Plane taking off (courtesy Simon Grubb at Flickr CC)When does it make sense to buy family travel insurance?

Vacation packages and cruises are often expensive, nonrefundable deals. If some crisis occurs, or you or someone in your family gets sick, you will often find it difficult or impossible to get your money back.  A travel insurance policy can give you peace of mind before the expense of big-ticket vacations. Trip cancellation and interruption insurance can cover you in case of the unexpected.

I normally don’t mess with it because I’m an independent operator, not a package traveler, and it’s not usually worth buying it for a $300 Southwest Airlines plane ticket or a hotel room for a few nights. Right now, however, I am bemoaning the fact that I did not buy third party travel insurance (meaning it is sold by a company totally separate from whichever business you are paying for their tour package.)

My teen daughter was scheduled for a language-immersion high school school trip to France this summer. The tour company, Voyageur Tours, suddenly went bankrupt last week.It’s been a respected company since 1992, so this was a complete surprise.

The full story, featuring me as “the travel writer who was unfortunately bitten by lack of travel insurance,” is on the Austin-area NBC affiliate KXAN News Web site:  Parents mad after bankrupt student tour.

I did not follow my own advice with my daughter’s trip; I’ve written that although many tour companies and cruise lines offer insurance,  I recommend buying it from a separate, reputable company. It’s the “eggs in one basket” theory; if a tour company or cruise line or airline suddenly goes out of business, I don’t want to be insured through them and not only lose my vacation, but also my compensation for the lost vacation.

Continue reading “Why your family should consider travel insurance: a cautionary tale”
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Texas USA

Peek behind the scenes with stingrays at SeaWorld

SeaWorld San Antonio shark mouth demo during a tour (photo by Sheila Scarborough)Breaking news….

….stingrays have very soft little vacuum-cleaner mouths.

I know this because when SeaWorld San Antonio hosted a group of Texas-based bloggers this past week, they took many of us on one of their educational tours (available to any visitor) to see some of the working areas of the park.

One stop included a small tank of young stingrays, and boy, do they like to eat!

Here’s a two-minute video with me, my son and one of our blogger group (Kristi and her family from Frugally Thrifty) perfecting our stingray feeding techniques. It was like being brushed with a cotton boll when they sucked the fresh fish bits from between our fingers.

Nope, no one was poked by any barbed tails.

Thanks, SeaWorld San Antonio and the San Antonio CVB, for hosting us!

Here’s the direct link to the stingray video on YouTube, if you can’t see the video box below:

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USA

It’s Home Educator Week in Colonial Williamsburg

Colored yarns at the weaver's, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia (Scarborough photo)

For those of my readers who homeschool, next week (September 17-21, 2007) is the designated “Home Educator Week” on site at Colonial Williamsburg, the 1700s living history museum in Virginia that my own family visited earlier this summer.

The Home Educator Week information sheet lists all sorts of places that you can visit and the role that they played in America’s Colonial daily life.

There are tradespeople like weavers and the wheelwrights (who kept carriages and wagons on the move) that you and the kids can watch in action, and the info sheet tells you who’s doing what and on which day.

For example:

“If you make your way back to Duke of Gloucester street you will find the Blacksmith ready to meet your needs Monday through Sunday from 9-5.  Directly across the street, visit the Print Shop in the mornings from 9-1, and the [book] Bindery in the afternoon from 1-5.”

There are also special learning programs this week at the Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. For example:

September 19

** 10:30am – Wee Folk – meet in the museum’s Introductory Gallery. This program is geared to children ages 3-7 and their adult friends. Participants explore the galleries through stories and activities. 45 minutes.

** 3:00pm – Crack the Code – meet in the museums’ Education Gallery. See if you can Crack the Code as we investigate various Secret Codes used during the [American] Revolution. One hour. Geared for ages 8 and older.

If you are there during this event, don’t miss musician Dean Shostak and his glass armonica (invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761.)  He’ll play it and other instruments in concert on Wednesday, September 19th at 11:30am and 1:30pm at Williamsburg’s Kimball Theater.

If you can’t make it to Virginia, there are electronic field trips and other teaching resources available, including a teacher’s e-newsletter.

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Technorati tags: travel, family travel, homeschooling, Colonial Williamsburg