Find flight deals on Wednesdays

Looking for a deal on airline tickets? Try searching your favorite travel sites on Wednesday, most experts will tell you. This is when airlines typically release new tickets and change rates, and it's the day of the week when prices are typically at their lowest point.

I tried the Wednesday trick last week and found a good deal. I've been searching for a good deal on tickets between San Francisco and London over the holidays with little luck. But last Wednesday Virgin dropped their prices, and I had my credit card ready to book.

Parents or flight crew: Who should keep kids in line on planes?

USA Today recently surveyed its readers about flying with kids and asked if parents or flight crews should be stricter about keeping young fliers in line. Most emailed comments about kids being out of hand on planes "pinned the blame on permissive parents."

"In 15 years, I've never had an unruly child on board who traveled with a hands-on parent," New York-based flight attendant Heather Poole, told the newspaper. "Last flight, this little girl threw her body on the ground ... and wouldn't walk down the aisle to her seat during boarding. Parents just looked at me and smiled."

Honestly, I find USA Today's question a little ridiculous. Of course, it's the parents responsibility. It seems the bigger question is, If the parents aren't doing their job then who should?

Former Chautauqua Airlines flight attendant Joel Rodriguez, 25, told USA Today that crews can ask parents to "control their kid, but that is just opening a can of worms." Parents may blame the attendant or airline, and it can become a "he said/she said" situation, he said. Trying to parent another person's misbehaving child can be dicey, Poole agrees.

What should airlines do when kids are unruly and the parents aren't dealing with the situation?

Always book when you find a deal

My father was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure. How did he deal with the news? Well, he has changed his diet dramatically but he also decided to take the entire family to London around the holidays. He rented a house near Piccadilly Circus, and now he has put me on booking plane tickets for everyone.

The No. 1 rule when booking in December is buy early for the best deals. And so about two weeks ago, I couldn't sleep one night and I found myself searching Kayak, Fly.com, Travelocity, and all the popular sites for flights between San Francisco and London.

Around 3 a.m. an airfare for $498 RT popped up on Virgin Airlines. Woah! This was cheap. Everything I had found up until then was between $800 to $1,000.

Was I simply tired and not seeing straight, or was this hot deal for real?

I'll never know because I didn't book the flight and when I finally got my dad's credit card a few days later the rates had gone up dramatically: $700 to $800. Darn!

This isn't the first time this has happened to me. Often when I first start to browse for airfares for a trip I come across unbelievable deals. My new rule is that when I find them I book them.

Puzzling together geography

As I mentioned in a post last week, I'm on a kick to teach my kids geography. I want them to know where Oklahoma is on a map and I want them to identify Antarctica in a snap.

I have found that puzzles are one great way to help them learn their cities, states, countries, and continents. Here are a few that are especially fun:

Puzzle Ball, $31.95, Amazon.com






















Giant Foam World Map, $26.99, ssww.com











United States of America Map, $19.99, Amazon.com

Best places to pretend you're an Olympian

The winter Olympics have kicked off, and maybe watching freestyle skiing gold medalist Alexandre Bilodeau fly through the air has made you feel a little bit sporty.

If you're feeling tempted to get in on the game, you ought to check out USA Today's list of the best places to feel like an Olympic champion.

Here's a rundown of their list and to get the inside scoop on each, be sure to read the full article here.

1) Utah Olympic Park, Park City, Utah
2) Rainforest Bobsled, Ocho Rios, Jamaica
3) Mont Tremblant Ski Resort, Québec, Canada
4) Bemidji Curling Club, Bemidji, Minn.
5) Mount Snow Resort, Mount Snow, Vt.
6) Tordrillo Mountains, Anchorage
7) Germain Arena, Estero, Fla.
8) Blackcomb Resort, Whistler, B.C.
9) U.S. Olympic Education Center, Marquette, Mich.
10) Whiteface Mountain, Wilmington/Lake Placid, N.Y.

Any other spots that should be added to the list?

Best places to steal a kiss

I will not be stealing a kiss with my lover in some faraway place this Valentine's Day.

No, my husband and I have two kids and we don't even have a babysitter lined up so we can go out for dinner. After we get the children to bed, we'll probably spend the evening curled up with my laptop watching old Arrested Development episodes on Hulu.com. Maybe we'll crack open a bottle of wine.

And so it was fun to scan Lonely Planet's list of "best places to steal a kiss" and daydream about where we might go to celebrate the holiday if we were still young and in love.

1. Paris, France: Our ‘pecking order’, so to speak, would be incomplete without the City of Lights and Love. Without besmirching the other classic places to smooch, our favorite spot is Père Lachaise Cemetery.

2. Hershey, USA: This quiet township is home to the Hershey’s factory, which produces the famous Hershey Kisses- you can literally steal all the kisses you want.

3. Kissing, Germany: The act of puckering up was invented here, in 1808. We jest of course. The origin of this delightful moniker remains a mystery.

4. Kiribati: Island destinations are always a great choice for a romantic getaway, but this tiny nation of rugged atolls offers a little something extra. It’s just west of the international date line, making it the first place in the world to welcome the new day. You and your special someone could be the first people on earth every morning to kiss.

5. Kissimmee, Florida: Just minutes from the famous Walt Disney World, Kissimmee announces its smoochability via its name and is a perfect locale for a romantic stroll through its historic downtown or a classic fairy tale kiss at Cinderella’s castle.

6. Venice, Italy: Local legend maintains that lovers will find eternal happiness if they share a kiss while passing beneath the Bridge of Sighs on a sunset gondola ride.

7. Casablanca, Morocco: ”Kiss me, kiss me as if it were the last time” was just one of Ingrid Bergman’s indelible phrases that catapulted the movie Casablanca to cult status, and forever gave the Moroccan metropolis a certain je ne sais quoi. Gaze into your lover’s eyes and whisper “we’ll always have Paris” (see #1).

This list is from Lonely Planet’s 1000 Ultimate Experiences.

Where will you be spending Valentine's Day? Are you traveling?

Teaching kids geography

When the National Geographic Society surveyed 18- to 24-year-old Americans in 2006 to find out what they knew about the world, only 37 percent could find Iraq on a map, despite the fact that U.S. troops have been in that country since 2003, according to the Harvard alumni magazine. Places closer to home didn't fare much better: 50 percent couldn't locate New York, the country's third largest state.

I'm determined to teach my children that there's a world outside their own community. Travel can certainly help with that but I'd also like them to be able to look at a map and identify states, countries, continents, oceans. I have come up with some ways to do this and in the next few blog posts I'll be highlighting those.

Here's my first tip:
National Geographic Kids has this great online game that allows children to become "GeoSpies" by correctly identifying countries, continents, states, and provinces on a world map. It's also a great way for adults to brush up on their knowledge. Click here to play

Big cities on a budget: $150 or $200 a day?

In less than two months my kids get a week off from school. Spring break!

We're planning to head East for a whirlwind tour of our nation's best big cities. We'll fly into Boston, head for New York, and then end up in D.C.

As usual we'll be traveling on a tight budget. But how tight should we make it? $150 a day? $200 a day? This needs to cover food, lodging, activities, and transportation.

What seems reasonable?

Where I want to bring my kids next: Oaxaca

I have always wanted to visit Oaxaca, the southern Mexico state stretching between the mountains of Chiapas and the Pacific Ocean. The rich moles sauces, the colonial capitol, the ancient ruins, the lazy beach towns--all of these things have called out to me.

After a friend brought her two children to Oaxaca the city and told me about taking a cooking class, I started to think about bringing my kids. And then I read a story highlighting Oaxaca's many kid-friendly attractions in the San Francisco Chronicle and now I'm convinced I must go. When? Not sure. But it has officially been put on my "places to go list" and moved above Iceland, India, and Morocco.

"It turns out that this place of endless diversions for adults also provides endless distractions for children, especially those with a love of pyramids, dolphins, chocolate, clay and monsters,"
David Frey writes in the Chronicle article. "Bonus points: They just might learn something about the culture without ever seeing a classroom."

Frey brought his 8-year-old twin boys to the state and writes about watching an explosion of fireworks over the city of Oaxaca, visiting a village where the children playing with clay at a pottery shop and learning to weave at a weaver's workshop, running up the stairs to the top of an ancient pyramid, and spotting turtles and dolphins at the beach.