I got my bags packed on a roll heading out there and I'm ready to go looking real good

in my passport photo.

Oh no!

Amateur Traveler, episode 316. Today the Amateur Traveler talks about Buffalo and

ziplines and Avalon as we go to Catalina Island in Southern California.

I know that I should be heading home. Welcome to the amateur traveler. I'm your host Chris Christensen. Before we get

into this week's interview I do have two news stories for you. In the first news

story it's bad enough to have lost luggage but it's worse to have someone steal from your luggage.

Probably worse steal for Rita Lambert, who is a 69-year-old woman who had to gate-check a bag that she was planning on carrying onto the plane, it had

a hundred and sixty thousand dollars worth of jewelry, which was stolen.

Now of course this leaves me with three questions.

One, why would anyone have a160,000 worth of jewelry?

Two, why would they feel it necessary to bring on vacation?

And three, why would they ever allow it out of their sight even when the choice is not to fly, which was the choice

that she was given.

The second story has the title, Families may have to pay extra to sit together in a flight, and

it's not that the airlines are charging a family sit together

tax, but what's happening is since they're starting to charge for premium seats, their flexibility

to just switch passengers around as they've often done to get a family to sit together

is not going to be quite as flexible in the future. So book early, possibly pay more for a couple

premium seats if you want to sit together, get to the airport early and

be nice to the flight attendants who may have to help you.

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