AOL Travel Ideas

Travel Tips: How to Hack Your Hotel Room and Make it More Like Home

Diana Lambdin Meyer — 2013-04-05T10:17:00+00:00

In a lifetime of traveling the world for business and pleasure, Tom and Joanne O'Toole of Willoughby, Ohio, have learned to pack one essential item to ensure a pleasurable hotel stay: light bulbs.Too often, they have found the bulbs in their hotel rooms were burned out or of such low wattage that working, reading or simply seeing was difficult.

The O'Tooles are not alone in thinking of rather unorthodox travel items to make a hotel room fit their particular needs. A public relations representative at Seabourn Cruise Line shares this story: "We have an occasional guest on Seabourn cruises who likes to bring balloons, inflate them and, after she hand washes her undies, she puts them on the balloons to dry in the bathtub. She says it works great, but it did prompt her suite stewardess to ask, 'Excuse me, ma'am, but exactly what kind of party are you planning?'"

Party or not, here are a few items you might want to throw in your bag to hack your hotel room and make it a lot more like home:

Clip clothes pins
Close those stubborn hotel draperies all the way. And you can use clothes pins to hang up clothes you've washed in the sink, in case you're all out of balloons.

Duct tape
It's an essential to resolve any of life's crises, so why not have it just in case? Repair luggage, shoes or whatever. Cruise passengers frequently report using duct tape to keep their verandah doors open for a fresh breeze. Use it to keep fitted sheets on the bed.

Extension cords
Yeah, we know that putting in lots of electrical outlets increases building costs, but, seriously, is there ever a convenient place to plug in the iron?

Surge protector with multiple outlet strip
While you're in the electrical aisle, add this item to make sure your electronics are charged and well-protected from forces beyond your control.

Suction cup hooks
Hotel bathrooms never seem to have enough hooks to keep all of your stuff off the floor, especially if there are several people in your room. Also, those who travel in wheelchairs cannot always reach the higher hooks, so sticking these at lower heights is really helpful.

Universal sink stopper/drain cover
How often have you tried to wash out your underwear and socks in the sink or tub only to discover there is no drain plug? That lack is a real problem for people changing their contact lens. This $1.50 item will take care of that problem and take up little space in your bag.

Rubber doorstop
And $2 will buy you a little safety and security. Place this on the inside of the door when you're in for the night and nobody else stands a chance of getting in.

WD-40
For all of those creaks and squeaks that drive a sane person crazy but somehow go unnoticed by hotel maintenance staff. Buy the non-aerosol variety if flying by air. Aerosol sprays are banned by TSA.

Corkscrew and a bottle of wine
To alleviate all issues not addressed by the above.

More tips to help you travel better:
How to Find Under the Radar Travel Spots
Group Trips: How to Plan a Smooth Getaway
Flying With Kids: How to Avoid a Cataclysm in Seat 9B
How to Communicate Abroad When You Don't Speak the Local Language
How to Relieve Stress on the Road

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After Devastating Tornado, Kansas Town Re-emerges 'Like No Other Place In America'

Diana Lambdin Meyer — 2013-03-05T14:12:00+00:00

Filed under: EcoTravel

People who were in Greensburg, Kansas, the night of May 4, 2007, talk of their ears popping, as if they were in an airplane descending at a rapid pace. The intense, almost painful ear popping was a result of the barometric pressure dropping as an EF5 tornado with a path nearly 2 miles wide and wind velocity of more than 200 m.p.h. churned its way through the community of 1,500 people.

It lasted about 15 minutes. When it was over, 12 people were dead and 960 homes and businesses destroyed. Some 200 homes and businesses received extensive damage. With the exception of a grain silo, the liquor store and one historic building, Greensburg no longer existed.

Located about two hours west of Wichita on U.S. Highway 54 near the Oklahoma state line, Greensburg, until that night, was known best as the home of the World's Largest Hand-Dug Well. An engineering marvel when it was built in 1888, even that Guinness Book entry did little to distinguish Greensburg from just about any other small-town, rural community in the U.S. But today, Greensburg is like no other place in America.

MORE: Greensburg, Kansas: Five Places to Go

As they began to dig their way out of the rubble that had been their lives, the people of Greensburg realized two things: They didn't want their town to simply disappear, and they had a chance to do something remarkable.

While meeting in a little Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer identified as City Hall - part of "FEMA-ville," a cluster of about 300 trailers build on the edge of what had been the town - the City Council decided that as Greensburg rebuilt, it would be rebuilt in the most environmentally friendly manner possible.

Today, nearly six years after the tornado, Greensburg has more LEED-certified buildings per capita than any other community in the world. The K-12 Kiowa County School is LEED Platinum-certified. So are the city hall and the community building known as the County Commons, as is the Kiowa County Memorial Hospital, the first critical-access hospital in the U.S. to receive that designation. The Kiowa County Courthouse is LEED Gold-certified.

So is a building called the Silo Eco-Home, which serves as headquarters for Greensburg Greentown, the nonprofit organization that supports residents in the effort to rebuild Greensburg sustainably. Guests may even spend the night in a bed-and-breakfast designed to showcase green living. The building's name and design reflect the grain silo that survived the tornado.

The first building in the state of Kansas to be LEED Platinum-certified opened in Greensburg one year to the day after the tornado: The 5.4.7 Art Center, which gets its name from that infamous date, May 4, 2007, was a gift to the community from the architecture grad students at the University of Kansas.

"The day when the art center was dedicated might have been the first time that many of us realized we really could build a better community," says Ruth Ann Wedel, a lifelong resident of Greensburg who now gives tours of the city. "We have so many young people intrigued by what's going on here and moving to town to be a part of it all."

Stacey Barnes is one of those people. She had grown up in Greensburg but moved away for the opportunities provided in a larger city. A talented potter, she now coordinates art shows, classes and special events in the 5.4.7 Art Center that, prior to the tornado, residents would have had to travel more than an hour to experience.

About 85 percent of the artifacts in the volunteer-operated Kiowa County Historical Museum (top photo) were lost in the tornado. But when it was time to rebuild, 33-year-old Jim Crawley saw a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put his history degree and professional training to work by moving to Greensburg to build a new museum.

Sarah Thompson had dreams of opening a business that showcased her skills in repurposing almost anything into useful household items and décor. A native of a nearby community, she had trouble getting her business off the ground, until she came to Greensburg and opened REvival in a LEED-certified building designed especially for small businesses. She is young, innovative and successful, the type of person any community hopes to attract.

Today, the Kiowa County Schools have hired additional kindergarten and pre-K teachers to meet the needs of the many young families who have come to Greensburg. School officials report the largest number of elementary school pupils in the history of the school district, a solid indicator of the health of this community.

And the World's Largest Hand-Dug Well is still here, surrounded by an eco-friendly visitors center that tells the environmentally relevant story about this access point to the Ogallala Aquifer, a major source of water for the central part of the U.S. The visitors center also documents the history of Greensburg, including that horrible night in May 2007 and how Greensburg has become truly green.

[Top photo: Diana Lambdin Meyer]

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Greensburg, Kansas: Five Places to Go

Diana Lambdin Meyer — 2013-03-05T14:11:00+00:00

Filed under: EcoTravel

Prior to May 4, 2007, a big night out in Greensburg, Kansas, might have been a visit to the soda fountain at Hunter's Drug Store for one of "Dickey's hickeys." Soda jerk Dick Huckriede had been serving up ice cream treats since the 1950s. Then on that May night an EF5 tornado -- the biggest and baddest category -- destroyed all but three buildings in this town of 1,500 people. Hunter's Drug Store was flattened along with almost everything else.

Thankfully, enjoying a treat from the soda fountain is still possible. Somehow in the midst of the clean-up, the soda fountain emerged, dented and dinged, but in pretty good shape. Today, that beloved soda fountain, now located in the Kiowa County Historical Museum, tops the list of five places to visit in Greensburg, the town with more LEED-certified buildings per capita than any place in the world.

MORE: After Devastating Tornado, Kansas Town Re-emerges 'Like No Other Place In America'

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America's Most Adventurous Dinner Theaters

Diana Lambdin Meyer — 2013-01-10T08:50:00+00:00

Filed under: Best Of

As the last wistful note of a Vivaldi concerto faded into the night, the audience applauded generously, as one would hope it would after a moving performance by a Juilliard-trained violinist. But it was the young woman's next move that would be the story told and retold to friends and family.

Slinging the violin over her shoulder, Janice Martin spun around and inched and wiggled her way up two silk draperies. She climbed more than 15 feet above the floor. Wrapping her ankles in the shimmering fabric, she flipped upside down, grabbed her fiddle and did a rousing rendition of Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir."

I stood and applauded.

So did most of the 700 other guests on the Showboat Branson Belle dinner cruise. That's not something you see every day, but that combination of impressive talent, remarkable food and the unexpected is typical of some of the country's most popular dinner theaters these days.

Vacation destinations like Orlando, Myrtle Beach and Los Angeles are popular breeding grounds for dinner theaters, particularly themed dinner shows. But adventurous shows can be found all across the country in communities big and small. Any of these should appeal to your appetite and sense of adventure.

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