Instead of letting the kids watch DVDs during your next road trip, use those long hours in the car to sharpen their minds.

That’s the advice from Dr. Katherine Wiesendanger, an education professor at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. She offers these tips for turning those mindless hours in the car to mind-sharpening opportunities.

Official Navigator

No minivan sallying forth to vacation wonderlands can arrive without a designated navigator. Why not appoint your child to the post? An official trip navigator’s title and duties are a great way to reinforce map reading, mathematics and geography skills.Dr. Wiesendanger recommends that during the trip, parents require the navigator to trace the family’s progress on a map. Every hour, call for an official report from the backseat, asking the navigator to detail location, current direction of travel, the next exit, the nearest town and the next state.

Mom or Dad can also add a mathematics component to navigator reports by asking for the total miles traveled and remaining, which the navigator can learn to compute using location information and the map’s scale. The driver can use the odometer to double-check.

A to Z

Dr. Wiesendanger suggests that road trips also present opportunities for kids and parents to sharpen verbal skills. Story-telling, for example, can involve the entire family and exercise everyone’s mind.

One idea is to use “story starters.” One family member starts the story with a simple “Once upon a time” statement. Each family member then takes a turn to build on the story. These stories can take imaginative, often humorous turns that entertain and create memories.

Another mind exercise idea is having kids keep a daily vacation journal, starting in the car. Writing brief reflections on the day’s experience and tomorrow’s anticipation lets kids practice expressing themselves. The journal also becomes a vacation keepsake that kids and parents are likely to treasure a few years down the road.

Airplane seat maps can be really handy for frequent or even for occasionally fliers and help them to choose their seat in the airplane even before they buy their tickets. Knowing the place where you seat before going aboard is very good because on almost all seating charts you can find all the details of a specific seat from extra legroom to missing windows or any other details.

Seat maps published by airlines

Most of the airlines publish the seats configurations for their airplanes but the quality of those seat maps is some times questionable and some of the details and information about seats are confusable. Usually airlines don’t publish seat maps for all of their airplanes, they do it only for the major airplanes and for the ones flying on frequent routes.

Seat maps published by specialized websites

In additions to those published seat maps which can be found on airlines websites there are some other sites that publish aircraft seat maps for almost all the commercial airplanes that are flying these days. Seat maps that can be found on these sites usually have more details and on some websites you can found comments from other passengers with ups and downs about each particular airplane seat.

Reading and understanding a seat map it’s a very simple job but people should be carefully on the design of each seat map because is different from website to website or from airplane to airplane, so reading the legend will help understanding the seat arrangements and the meaning of each symbol from the seat map, in this way mistakes can be avoided and passengers can make the best decision for their flight.

Choosing your seat is important as choosing an airline or an airplane to fly with, some people prefer to fly only if they seat is near a window or some people like to fly in their own cabin and the requests and conditions of each passenger could go on. Consulting a seat map before going aboard can bring only benefits and can show to the passengers more details about the airplane comparing with the  details and information about each airplane or flight that airlines are publishing.

The bottom line is that airplane seat maps which can be found very easy on the web can help people choosing the best seat that will satisfy  the all demands for them. Finding the right seat with the help of aircraft seat maps can improve very much the flight conditions and things can be better when fliers read other people’s reviews of seats and airplanes because bad seats or bad flights can be avoided.

The likes of P&O Cruises, Royal Caribbean, Cunard and many more offer their best deals online these days and you can find yourself a bargain in no time. There are cheap cruise holidays being offered every day and there are once in a lifetime opportunities being opened up to visit some of the most exotic locations anywhere in the world. You might have a firm idea of where you’d most like to visit on your next cruise but you could always allow yourself to be inspired by some of the best package deals that are offered each day on a per person basis.

There are in fact more options when it comes to cheap cruise holidays than there ever has been before with cruise lines competing fiercely for your custom and doing everything they possibly can to maintain impeccable standards of service. There are family-oriented ships that are awe-inspiring even to look at and that incorporate entertainments that are every bit as good as the very best you’ll find on dry land. The cruise industry is evolving and consumers have a greater-than-ever array of holidays to choose from.

Understanding what kind of holiday you’re after and what kind of person you are will go some way towards helping you narrow down your search for the perfect cruise. History lovers might want to take up the chance to visit the Mediterranean coastline that is famously packed with so much stunning archaeology and Roman ruins. Meanwhile, the most avid sun-worshippers would do well to avoid heading north from the UK and might be better off heading south for a tour of the Canary Islands. For a potentially more romantic option, there are short cruises that take in an increasingly wide selection of magnificent locations. And short trips of course give novice cruise holiday makers the chance to find out for themselves whether or not they love the life on the open waves.

There has never been a better time to dip your toe in the water when it comes to cruise holidays and the simplicity of online booking means the process is more painless than ever. You can now find extraordinary package deals to make sure you get exactly the kind of cruise holiday you’re looking for and at a price that suits you budget. So what exactly are you waiting for.

An increasingly important number of visitors are traveling to Dubai each year, on business trips, to attend trade shows and conventions, or for leasure. In the last nine months of 2007, the number of guests staying in hotels in Dubai rose 7 percent to 5.1 million while hotel occupancy rates rose 4.1 percent to reach 86.9 percent.

In terms of Hotels, Dubai offers a wide array of choices. However the hotel chain brand names, ratings and facilities differ dramatically from the European or the US market. Also the ethnical and cultural variety of Dubai, its geographical spread and its problematic traffic system, make it easy for you to make the WRONG choice.

There are a ton of websites that offer online hotel room booking for Dubai. But all these websites don’t offer more than the “official blabla” description of the hotel.Is is a good hotel for business? What if I’m attending a trade show? Do they have working girls in the lobby (Could be a very bad idea if you’re traveling with children)? Is their cuisine strictly Asian?

A group of business travelers united to launch the first “honest” Dubai hotel reviews community at Practical Dubai dot com Dubai hotel reviews.

You can also contribute and send your tips and tricks, do’s and don’ts and help others all free of charge.

I was staying at helsinki, the Finlandia hotellit which at the first I thought that I will get the same services such as other hotels, but when I staying there, I realized that I got more than what I expected . I can refresh my mind with the sauna and I can enjoy the outdoor terrace after I had my hard day. Those were only some of the things that I got from the hotel; there are still other hotels that you can choose to stay with different offer of services and facilities from each hotel.I hope to have another business journey to Finland and stay in different Finland hotel again. I want to try different service and facilities that will make me able to refresh my mind on the business journey.