Travel, with all its disruptions of your normal routines, is too often no belly laugh. Even when you do stick to your regular eating habits, the stress of running for taxis, dragging suitcases, making your way through crowds, delayed flights, too-quick meals and many other negative factors all gang up to make your solar plexus very unhappy. And your heart may not be too thrilled, either.

Then the problems begin, ranging from nausea to sleeplessness to bathroom distress. Here are just a few common sense tips that can at least help to make the journey more pleasing to your placid stomach and happier heart:

In “A Tale of Two Cities”, Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Those words seems to fit today’s luxury hotel business dilemma. It can be the best of times for the senior traveler, while the worst of times for those overpriced posh palaces we could never before afford. At least until now.

It’s in the news daily, and now you see it in the newspaper, on TV and online ads. Prices are down, particularly in the upscale hotels. In addition to the general slowdown in the national economy, the big hotels have been hit by guilty consciences. There has been a drastic drop in conference and convention business in Las Vegas, New York, San Francisco, London, Paris and other former luxury destinations for big business travel.

We know this will come as quite a shock to you senior sojourners, but there are some thieves out there in travel land. Wallets and purses somehow find a way to disappear, either from being swiped or just accidentally left behind in hotel rooms, restauranst, taxis or airplanes.

So, if your purse or wallet get lost while you’re traveling, you don’t need the extra panic of trying to remember all the information on your important cards and papers that could be gone forever. So, before you leave home, use your scanner and printer to copy all of those important items. They may not help to recover your lost items, especially if they’ve been stolen, but they will help you remember precisely what you’ve lost.  

Keep the duplicates in a safe place at home or in your bank security box. Then, if you lose the originals, you can use the copies temporarily until the new cards and papers arrive.

No doubt at all: cruises are still the best all-inclusive, all-around vacation values. However, those bargain prices and never-ending free midnight buffets don’t pay for the enormous expenses of running a big ocean liner. When you board your next ship, consider the fuel, maintenance, repairs, repainting, crew salaries, food supplies and all the other high costs.

You know the $500 you pay for that three-night, all-inclusive sailing can’t possibly do much to add to the profits of the cruise line. So, how do they make money from you? The extras, of course. Here are some extra expenses you’ll need to consider on your next cruise. If you’re very frugal, you don’t have to spend money on any of them. However, in the spirit of fun and what-the-hell cruises give you, and knowing the extras are there to help the  cruise line make a profit, you may consider none, some or all of them.