I agree with the travelers who take digital pictures of their rental cars upon picking them up (Sept. ’10, pg. 40). I do so, myself, and although I have returned cars with a scratch or two it has never been an issue.

I have found that rental cars tend to be inspected more thoroughly at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports than they are at the less-well-known airports (e.g., Bristol), where the return inspections have been cursory or nonexistent. I do get a “prerental” damage...

When looking for a hotel, I never book one without reading all the reviews on www.tripadvisor.com, which provides large numbers of specific opinions on destinations. It takes some processing to sort out the bozos from the normal travelers, but I’ve not been disappointed in a hotel I’ve chosen from this site in the last 10 years.

For example, I avoid hotels where I can’t open the windows, a fact rarely posted on a hotel’s website (Hilton is good about it, though). A hotel can have...

My husband, Nelson, and I traveled to France in June ’09 and to England and France in July-August ’10. Each time, we took cash to Washington Dulles airport and, before our flight, found a Travelex counter and got a Cash Passport prepaid debit card in euros. Each had a magnetic stripe but no chip.

What I particularly liked is that these prepaid cards were not linked to any bank account, and if one were lost, stolen or compromised, Travelex would put an immediate stop on it and issue us...