Some Dos and Don’ts When Traveling

By Janice Lane Palko

I don’t know if they still do it, but back when I used to have a subscription to it in the 1970s, Glamour magazine, used to publish a spread called “Dos and Don’ts,” which highlighted fashion hits and misses. With the arrival of warmer weather, many of us begin to think about travel and vacation. 

There are many people who have been to far more places than I have, but I consider myself very blessed to have been able to take some memorable trips and have seen some wonderful sites. I’ve also seen some things tourists have done, that left me wondering, what were they thinking? So, in the spirit of Dos and Don’ts, here are some tips I hope will make your travels more enjoyable.

Do your homework. The first tip is to do some homework before you go to a foreign country, which is so much easier these days with all the travel videos on YouTube. You can learn about what places are safe to venture into, places that are tourist traps, must-see sites, and a country’s cuisine. 

Don’t leave home without it. After that, be sure to have the right documentation. On our first trip to Europe, there was a family with a middle-aged mother and her three twenty-something offspring. They missed the first four days of the tour because they had flown out of their home in Atlanta to their connecting flight in New York, only to get the Big Apple and discover that they had left their passports at home. They had to fly back to Atlanta retrieve their passports, then fly back to New York and fly to Rome and then try to catch up to the tour. 

Don’t drink too much. When we were in Paris there was a group of younger people on our tour who decided to go out for a night of drinking the evening we arrived in the City of Lights. The next day while the rest of the group from the tour was enjoying views from atop the Eiffel Tower, these party animals were sitting on a park bench under the tower vomiting into a trash can. Ooh la - Nah!

Do pay attention and observe local protocols. While in Monaco watching their changing of the guard ceremony at the Royal Palace, we witnessed a woman hop over a rope barricade and cross through the military formation, bumping into soldiers so she could go to another souvenir shop across the street. She nearly got arrested, and I think it would have been fitting if Prince Albert had put her in the can.

Don’t treat the world as your oyster or your living room. When touring the Sistine Chapel, you enter the chapel from a gate on one side, then gawk at Michaelangelo’s masterpiece, then exit through a gate on the other end of the chapel. At a certain time, we were to meet outside the exit. One couple never came and never came. Finally, they appeared and explained that they bought espressos and thought they could sip coffees while touring the chapel. Wrong. You can’t bring food or drinks into sacred places or venues that house priceless works of art. 

Do dress appropriately. Many places in Europe and elsewhere have dress codes when it comes to visiting religious sites. Take note before you go or you may be forced to wear a pink plastic tablecloth as a skirt to cover your bare legs as we saw some men who were wearing shorts be forced to do that to be able to visit the church of the Annunciation in Israel. 

Do listen to your guide. When our cruise ship docked in Naples, that morning I drew our curtains and said, “Oh wow, there’s Mt. Vesuvius!” It was hard to mistake the iconic mountain formation with the dip in it where the mountain top blew and destroyed Pompeii. That day we toured Pompeii, and our guide referenced Mt. Vesuvius and pointed to it numerous times throughout the tour. When the tour was over, one man raised his hand and said, “Now where would Mt. Vesuvius be?” Everybody in the group looked at each other incredulously. Where had that man been for the last two hours?

Do keep your opinion to yourself. At a luau on Maui in 1986, I was seated next to an older man from New Jersey, who went on and on disparaging the sunset on the beach there as being inferior to sunsets on the Jersey Shore. I’d been to the beaches in New Jersey, and no offense, but Maui was much better.

Finally, do have a good time as you explore the world and don’t let the others get to you.