Three years ago, we spoke with Kayt Sukel, a freelance writer and Travel Savvy Mom, about her favorite family travel destinations–and her favorite travel memories with her son, Chet.  Since then, she’s made a few changes.  She has moved back to the states after six years in Europe, got divorced and has just published a book about love and the brain called Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex and Relationships. But, naturally, she’s still traveling.  Today, she talks about how her time in Europe changed her view of the states, the call of the Mouse, and why you never have to choose between love and travel.

1.  Last time we talked, you mentioned Chet had been to 20 countries.  What’s his count now?

With trips to the Galapagos and Mexico this past summer, he’s now at 38. I think it’s a good number–and since we’ll be traveling more in the states in the next few years, it’s respectable enough to stick with for a while.

2.  You recently returned to the states after several years in Europe.  How is that changing your travel style?

I miss Europe–and it would be easy to moan about all the things that Europe has that the U.S. may lack. Not to mention, how easy it is to travel there. But the truth is, being in Europe for so long got me really excited about exploring more of the U.S. It’s such a huge country with so many regional attractions and cultures.  It’s probably time I got out there and experienced more of it firsthand.

3.  Has Chet’s favorite destination changed?

Kayt's son Chet at Disney's Castaway Cay.

Yes.  While he still appreciates running around and seeing new things, he’s become a full-fledged Disney fanatic. He adored our trip to Disneyland Paris before we left Europe and became thoroughly hooked on the Mouse after our cruise on the Disney Dream. He now wants every trip to include some kind of Disney component.

4.  I know you write things beyond travel but was surprised to see that you were writing a book about love, sex and the brain.  How did that happen?

I know it sounds odd but it was a really transition for me. One of my other beats is neuroscience. I actually studied it and thought I was going to go into a career in academia. That didn’t happen, of course, but my fascination with the brain remained. And I’ve been writing about it ever since. So when my marriage started to fall apart, instead of heading to the self-help aisle for answers, I went to the brain journals.  And as I learned more, I realized there was a lot of great information that people might not know. So Dirty Minds really is my exploration of all the ways our neurons can wreak havoc with our hearts–and what we can learn from just paying better attention to our own biology.

5.  So what’s better? Love or travel?

No one should ever have to make that choice! It would just be mean. So I’ll just say that my work on Dirty Minds showed me just how much love and exploration are tied together, and you can see it in areas of the brain involved in reward and risk processing. I think there is a deep biological reason that so many of us are compelled to explore and seek out new experiences. And like love, they are often too strong to be denied.

6.  What’s next on your travel agenda?

Now that Chet is older, we’re a bit limited by his school schedule. But we’re actively spending our weekends exploring our own background and the greater Houston area. And I’m already actively thinking about every and all of his school breaks–Montana and Wyoming are calling!

When I was working on cruise ships there was this unwritten code about things we were not supposed to discuss with passengers. And I always thought one day, when I was no longer in their employment, I would finally be able to provide some sound advice for would-be cruisers, so they would be able to get real value for their money and stay away from trouble when they set off on their dream vacation.

So, here is list of cruising tips developed after five years of working as a youth counselor for one of the top cruise lines in the world.

Water on Cruise Ships

Hubbard Glacier, as seen on an Alaskan cruise.

There is no way around this: the water on cruise ships is bad. The drinking water doesn’t taste good, and it likely won’t quench your thirst. The water in the shower will dry your hair and your skin. Normally, this will not affect you, if you are on a ship for only a couple of weeks tops. But if you have ever had any problems with dry skin, I recommend you wash your face with bottled water, the same for your hair, if you are extra careful with it. As for the drinking water, a couple of dollars per bottle won’t crush your wallet, but they will preserve your health

Food on Cruise Ships

The bulk of what you eat on a cruise comes from the freezer. For fresh, healthy meals I suggest you eat at local restaurants during ports of call. Cruise employees know the best restaurants at every port, and they jump at the opportunity to have a great healthy meal prepared with fresh local ingredients. Plus, whatever Greek buffet that might be offered on board will never compare to what you can have at one of the tavernas in Mykonos or Athens. In a way, if you don’t eat off the ship, you will be depriving yourself of one of he greatest pleasures of traveling.

Shore Excursions

I am not the biggest fan of port tours, but if you want to go to a place that is more than half an hour away from the port and you want to guarantee your being back on time for sailing, you should book a shore excursion through your cruise ship. Ships won’t wait for you and your family, but they will for shore excursions they sell.

For example, if you are in Livorno and want go to Florence, and you try to navigate the train yourself, you will have a couple of hours in the city at best. If you want to rent a car, it might cost 100 Euro, plus gas, and there is no guarantee you will make it back to the ship on time, especially since traffic is unpredictable.

See Rome's Coloseum on a shore excursion.

Day tours that provide lunch are typically a good bet, since they allow you to take a break from fast-paced sightseeing. Plus, they are an excellent choice for people traveling alone, as they create more opportunities to socialize over a relaxed meal.

If you prefer to “do your own thing” and not join a group tour, the best choice is to be on an “on your own tour” where the tour bus will simply drop you off and pick you up at a strategic spot near all the attractions. That allows you plenty of time, say, for shopping, if you’d rather browse shops than visit museums included on a set itinerary.

Kids’ Clubs on Cruise Ships

Whatever your travel agent is telling you about kids’ club timetables, fees, and admittance ages, always double check the cruise company’s website (or pick up the phone) to make sure you got the right information.

Most kid’s clubs will not take kids under 3 who are not potty trained, and you will need to hire a babysitter. You will have to take this into account while you are budgeting your trip

Packing for Cruise Ships

Even if you are traveling through warm areas in the summer, the air can get cold at sea, so, it is not a bad idea to pack some warm clothes – certainly some pants and a sweater or jacket.

Women would be well advised to leave most of their high heels at home. Other than on a formal night, there will be few places to wear them, and you should certainly pack some comfy shoes for sightseeing day trips.

Europe in the summer, Hawaii and the Caribbean call for very summery packing. The clothes that you’ll need out in port during the day will be the coolest you can lay your hands on. Long sleeves and the like will most likely have you sweating all day.

Be sure to consult your cruise line’s website and read through all pre-departure documents, so you’ll be prepared for any dress codes, costume parties or even white parties (Greek-themed events where everyone wears white) on board the ship.

Motion Sickness on Cruise Ships

Modern ships tend to be pretty stable. Unless you are sailing from the Californian coast out to Hawaii or through hurricane-prone territory during the bad season, sea sickness will likely not be a problem. If you know you have a problem with that, you can ask for pills, which will generally be available from staff and are supposed to be taken before as a preventive measure.

Highlights of Cruising

To end on a positive note, here are some of my favorite things to do on a cruise:

• Sipping glass of wine on deck at sunset, which will taste much better in good company.
• Listening to a jazz concert at one of the lounges, when the orchestra musicians come to jam and relax after the big show.
• Eating a fabulous dinner at the best restaurant on board with four amicable waiters and one sommelier attending to your every need.
• Enjoying an outdoor jacuzzi at sunset.
• Working out in a fitness room with grand sea views, and then relaxing with a steam or spa treatment.
• Reading a great book on the sun deck. (Ship libraries may surprise you, too.)
• Napping with a delicious sea breeze coming from your stateroom balcony. (Yes, absolutely do get a balcony if you can!)

And the list could go on and on. Cruises can be wonderful experiences. You just need to know a thing or two, in order to be able to enjoy them to the fullest.

Happy cruising, or as I used to say in those port terminals back in the day, “Welcome aboard!”

CruiseSavvyGal Veronica Pamoukaghlian is a writer, filmmaker, former cruise ship staffer and travel blogger. Read more of her cruise tips at The Wander Life and follow her on Twitter at @verozoneuy. Photos by frequent cruiser Nancy Morrison.

Readers, cruise lines: What do you think of Veronica’s tips? Is she on target? Sound off in the comments.

We don’t typically cover the business of travel writing here at The Vacation Gals. (We leave that to smart pals like Trisha Miller of Travel Writers Exchange). But when a travel writer says something that gets our britches in a twist, it’s hard not to pipe up and comment in more than 140 characters.

Novelist Ann Patchett — who wrote bestselling, award-winning Bel Canto — asks in an online Wall Street Journal piece, “Did I Kill Gourmet Magazine?” That ambiguous title did nothing to prepare me for the 650 boastful, attention-seeking, arrogant (thanks @ShannaQuinn for that appropriate adjective) words that followed.

Patchett describes her 10 years covering travel at Gourmet magazine, which folded in 2009 after 68 years in print. During this time she enjoyed a lavish expense account, courtesy of her editor Bill Sertl (rhymes with turtle, but more on that later).

In the article, she details how she was able to write about whatever she wanted — and got editor Sertl to send her wherever she wanted to go, paying for amenities and services that were questionably related to the topic she asked to cover.

A few quotes from Ann Patchett’s recent opinion piece on WSJ.com:

For 10 golden years they picked up the tab while I ate at the best restaurants and laid down my head on the highest thread-count sheets. I never saw a bill.

…when I had a particularly endless stretch of house guests, I told Sertl I would like to check into a very fine hotel alone and not leave the premises for a week. He thought this was a terrific pitch.

For my 40th birthday I asked rather petulantly to be sent somewhere nice. There was a new resort opening in Antigua that needed to be reviewed. I was just the reporter for the job.

Re-reading these quotes, I just want to scream (in my nicest PG-13 voice), “WHAT THE HECK?”

Am I envious on Patchett’s 10-year-long gravy train? Absolutely. But beyond being absolutely green with envy — who wouldn’t want to have yearly vacations paid for by a “nothing’s too good for you my dear” client? — I am just shocked and incredulous that she’d put these words on a screen. And in the Wall Street Journal, no less. (I’m not sure the motivation behind the the WSJ even publishing such a piece. If it’s eyeballs and controversy, they got it.)

Why, Ms. Patchett, are you telling me these stories of travel-writing grandeur? Are you trying to be funny when you write, “Did I think about the fact that I was bankrupting the magazine?” You’re not funny to me, who cobbles together freelance travel-writing work from dozens of clients in an effort to help put food on my family’s table. And you’re not funny to the hundreds of other freelance writers who are also lamenting the demise of good-paying magazines in recent years.

I’m guessing you’re not funny to S.I. Newhouse Jr., who lost hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars printing Gourmet while extravagant expenses like yours drove the magazine into the ground. But now that I think about it, perhaps Newhouse got what he deserved. After all, it was Newhouse who hired the publisher who hired an editor-in-chief who hired an editor who not only okayed such luxurious expenses, but even trivial ones, like a $6 live turtle, saved by Patchett from the soup pot in the Amazon. (According to Patchett, Sertl said, “You may expense any animal that rhymes with the name of your editor.” Give me a break  — could any of you, fellow travel writers, imagine asking your editor to pay you back after saving the life of a turtle while on assignment? Now imagine yourself as a successful novelist, who certainly doesn’t live paycheck to paycheck, writing bestselling books. Really silly, right?)

I’m guessing that Patchett wrote the WSJ article to comment on magazine writing in its no-holds-barred heyday. Indeed, travel writers at large are disappointed we aren’t commanding the same pay-per-word print assignments we did three years ago, but do you, Ms. Patchett, really need to brag about what used to be?

I’m also thinking that Patchett wrote the WSJ piece since she has another book coming out next year. Still, it’s a little early to start the online buzz for a forthcoming novel. On the flip side, why wait until a year after Gourmet‘s shuttering? Wasn’t she bummed about her sugar-daddy travel-writing outlet last fall?

But my biggest beef with Patchett is her overall tone. She could have written a humorous piece about the state of the current travel-writing industry without making all of us other hardworking travel writers look bad. Trust me, we’re not all as entitled (thanks @NYCityMama for another great adjective).

Nor would we all expense our travel-writing clients for a $6 turtle.

**********

Travel-writing community: I’ve sounded off — now it’s your turn. On Twitter, you’ve called Patchett cocky (@NathanKam) and boastful (@SpencerSpellman). Got anything else to say? Are you not as offended as I am?

Better yet, Ann Patchett, can you explain the motivation behind writing such a piece? I’m guessing you monitor Google Alerts of your name — would love firsthand insight.

Sunday is Mother’s Day — do you have big plans? Will you be served breakfast in bed, or perhaps you have a spa appointment? A special brunch at a favorite restaurant? Or maybe you have an entire weekend of travel on the agenda. I’ll be hanging out with my family in our pop-up camper in a Utah campground on Mother’s Day. I’m hoping it will be a weekend filled with hikes and scenic vistas and plenty of s’mores — or at least that’s the plan, anyway. Toasty warm desert weather is quite appealing to me right now, after the snowy and wet spring we’ve had here in Colorado.

In honor of the Mother’s Day holiday, we present some of the awesome traveling moms we’ve interviewed over the past few years. These are oh-so-talented ladies are incredible bloggers, website owners, book authors, travel industry experts and more. We hope you’ll take the time to read their Q&As to learn more about some inspiring, fun moms who love to travel.  (And don’t forget to call your own mother to say, “Hey, thanks for putting up with me through those teenage years…”)

Travel writer Andy Gross

TBEX and Galavanting.tv founder Kim Mance

TwitterMoms founder Megan Calhoun

Movie star Nia Vardalos

Ciao Bambino contributor Nancy Solomon

Fabulously40.com founder Yana Berlin

Type A Mom founder Kelby Carr

ZUCA luggage company CEO Laura Udall

Travel writer Nancy Brown

Jet with Kids Author Anya Clowers

Road-tripping book author Carol White

The Little Travelers DVD series creator Angelina Hart

Bookstore-blogging mom Kim Allen-Nielsen

Travel Savvy Mom Jamie Pearson

Travel writer Allyn Evans

Travel writer & radio-show personality Carmel Mooney

Travel writer (who just signed a book deal) Kayt Sukel

Cross-continent bicyclist (with kids in tow) Nancy Sathre-Vogel

Whew! We’ve talked to a lot of moms. We sure are inspired by their endeavors, and we hope you are too. Enjoy your Mother’s Day!

The Vacation Gals are thrilled (thrilled!) to announce that we have begun contributing articles to HybridMom.com, a site devoted to moms who are “actively pursuing our personal and professional goals on terms that still allow us a fulfilling family life.” The Vacation Gals wrote a piece about girlfriend getaways in Hybrid Mom’s Summer 2009 print magazine, and now we’re travel columnists for the website, which is chock full of articles for moms who balance the carpool and the computer, work conferences and PTA meetings.

First up: a round-up by me of romantic, tropical, adults-only destinations — since we firmly believe that Mom and Dad need a vacation away from the kids every once in a while (as much as we embrace family travel, we get that parents need time alone to rekindle romance, too!). No surprise, in this inaugural piece for HybridMom.com, I included a paragraph about Couples Resorts, where I spent five fabulous nights on Jamaica with my husband earlier this month. In the story, I also highlight grown-ups-only offerings in the Riviera Maya, Mexico, and Turks & Caicos.

We hope you’ll bookmark HybridMom.com and regularly return to check out all the awesome articles about how we can better balance work, life and play in our busy lives. Regarding travel, we’ll be covering not only grown-up escapes, but also destination suggestions for family trips and girlfriend getaways. As our Hybrid Mom bio says, we’re The Vacation Gals – Your Go-To Gals for Vacation Information!

If I were 30-something, kid-less, mortgage-less and husband-less, and making my living as a freelance travel writer like Charyn Pfeuffer, I’d want to do exactly what she’s doing right now. That is, raising money to fund her Global Citizen Project, in which she travels to 12 countries over the course of 12 months, volunteering with 12 community projects.

How cool is that?

In her own words,

“In an attempt to connect and contribute, it is my plan to swap my BlackBerry for a backpack and volunteer around the world… It’s impossible to save the world with bite sized stints of service, but it’s my hope to promote responsible travel and volunteer tourism… I plan to embark on this adventure in June 2010 and will commit a minimum of two weeks of volunteer service per month.”

The prolific travel writer has contributed to more than 80 publications in her career spanning 12 years (that number again!). Not only is she planning to take a break from writing assignments, but she’s embarking on a year of travel to honor her mom, who passed away from lung cancer 20 years ago:

“In 1990, exactly two weeks before my mother’s passing, she disclosed a very short list of end-of-life regrets, including: ‘I never went to Europe.’ Her words, now my raison d’être, have inspired me to live life fully, spontaneously and with purpose. Okay, maybe it’s also been influenced by some strong-willed Taurus tendencies (the blessing and burden of sharing a birthday with Earth Day), but regardless, I’ve made deliberate choices to live a life of travel.”

The plan is for her to raise $20,000 in donations to cover the costs of travel, living expenses and other fees associated with her voluntourism. That’s just $1,666 per month — which means she’ll be spending money rather frugally. She won’t be living “on the road” the entire year, but rather traveling back to her Seattle home (and longtime boyfriend and dog) every month in between her minimum two-week stints of volunteering.

Of her planned schedule, Charyn says, “When I sat down with my boyfriend and said, ‘Hey, this is what I want to do. How can I achieve this and not destroy our relationship?’ this is a schedule we came up with. She further notes, “I also really want to have some time to soak up each experience, process it, and then mentally prepare for the next.”

Her anticipated projects take her mostly to Latin American countries, but she’s aiming to hit Europe and volunteer in her home state of Washington, too. Potential and confirmed projects include working some really great organizations that help local youth and improve the area environment.

Charyn Pfeuffer and two new friends along the Amazon River in Peru, 2008

How can you help? Donate money to assist Charyn in reaching her $20,000 fundraising goal. As of this writing, she’s already collected more than $3,300 in pledges. What’s really nifty about Kickstarter.com, the website that’s managing the fund collection for the Global Citizen Project, is that if she doesn’t reach her $20,000 goal by February 22, 2010, the entire project won’t be funded (i.e. your credit card won’t be charged, and unless a generous benefactor appears at the last minute, Charyn can’t follow through with her planned trip).

Another cool aspect of giving at Kickstarter.com: you can give as little as $1. And for certain increments ($10 up to $1,666) you can earn a “reward” if you like. For example, if you give $50, Charyn will mail you a half-pound of gourmet coffee; for $250 you earn a night at a Seattle hotel.

The Vacation Gals certainly want to see this project get off the ground, so we’re giving $40 to the Global Citizen Project, in the hopes that we’ll indeed be able to vicariously follow Charyn on her year-long endeavor; she’ll be updating her blog and Twitter feed with reports from the field along the way. Forty bucks isn’t much, but we’ve seen here in the travel blogging community how “every little bit counts,” especially with such charitable fundraising endeavors as Passports with Purpose, in which travel bloggers worldwide worked together to raise $27,000 in just one month to fund the building of a school in Cambodia.

We hope our readers will also help send Charyn on this very worthy adventure!

When travel writers love what they do, it shows in their stories. Be it through articles, blog posts, or videos, that passion for experiencing different aspects of travel can’t be faked. The Vacation Gals admire Kim Mance for this very reason. Not only did she co-create the website/video blog Go Galavanting/Galavanting, but she also started the Travel Blog Exchange, a forum/online meeting ground for professional travel writers everywhere. It’s quite an accomplishment, and Kim manages to take some pretty fantastic vacations at the same time. This, no doubt, is a mama we wanna get to know better.

Tell us a little about your family; how do you schedule your trips around your children’s needs? How have your kids adapted?

Have you heard of a little group called The Brady Bunch? That fairly well sums us up — down to the curly-haired youngest girl. We’ve actually got five kiddos between my newly gained husband and me. And this is where it gets awkward, because I have to point out the one big benefit of divorce (if it has to happen): visitation.  I have custody of my three, and my ex has visitations in week or two-week increments during school breaks. So basically, I just schedule the bulk of our travels around their visitations with the other parent. The kids never even know I’m missing, and I enjoy guilt-free travel.

The kids love watching the videos and all make me promise I’ll take them hiking in Italy’s Cinque Terre or to Rome’s famed monuments one day. And I will. In fact, whenever possible, I take the kids with me traveling now, because it not only expands their worldview, it helps them realize that packing a bag and going somewhere isn’t scary or intimidating (and that mommy always returns).

What was the inspiration for creating TBEX?

Debbie Dubrow and I wanted to get a bunch of travel folks together. Chicago is a great central location, and since the fabulous BlogHer annual conference is happening in late July, we cooked up a meeting and planned it. The whole thing has come together beautifully and the response overwhelming. Attendees are coming from far and wide and we want to make the big bash worth everyone’s time and effort.

My cohorts at Galavanting and I took it a step further and thought it would be great to involve the worldwide travel folks who can’t make it to the TBEX 09 meetup in an online community as well. So we spent many very late nights brainstorming and creating until we came up with the TBEX Community website in January 2009. To date, the site already acts as a hub for nearly 1,000 travel bloggers and PR professionals interested in connecting with them.

What are your future plans for TBEX and/or Galavanting?

We want to keep TBEX active and useful and will be reaching out to members of the press, media, and PR reps, as well as advertisers, to highlight the burgeoning community of travel writers on the web. TBEX can raise their visibility and connect bloggers to each other in ways that simply surfing the net for kindred spirits cannot.

As far as Galavanting goes, we want it to become a household name. My co-founder Katy Quissell and I had the original idea of a television show that featured women with spunk, useful information, adventurous tendencies, and non-boringness. Women we could relate to. And not many of the travel shows, if any, were doing that. We started the online travel magazine GoGalavanting.com to help other women tell their stories of adventure, and then launched Galavanting.tv which was fairly quickly picked up by a distributor called KoldCast.tv who made us available on TiVo and across the web. We hope it will soon be on regular television too.

You co-operate Galavanting, and the four of you live in very different places. Do you coordinate travel plans to see each other – and if so, how often?

Great question. I’m in Chicago, Katy is in London, and Maren & Courtney are in Omaha. In fact, I don’t know what we’d do without the many Google tools available to us — we use a shared calendar, collaborative spreadsheets, and endlessly confusing color-coded documents before a trip. We make carefree, fun Galavanting episodes, but there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work and planning that goes into it. And keeping up with a brand new travel destination every month has proved to be no small feat. We end up seeing each other about once every three months or so at least, which goes faster than it seems. Surely you experience the same thing with the fabulous Vacation Gals group! It is pretty much the best job in the world.

Thanks for the Q&A, Kim! Any traveling mom is a friend of ours.  Kim can be found on Twitter, for anyone who would like to hear more from her.