With Mother’s Day on Sunday, Hillary’s run for the nation’s top job saturating our media outlets and the new issue of Budget Travel’s Girlfriend Getaways out on newsstands, it seems like a fine time for a juicy gab sesh about women’s travel.

I was perusing Peter Greenberg’s weekly Travel News Roundup this morning (one of my fave travel sites), and was inspired by 50 Best Girlfriend Getaways author Marybeth Bond’s Top 5 Tips for Women Travelers. Bond, who makes regular appearances everywhere from Oprah to National Geographic, offers some great, all-purpose tips for women on the road.

I’ve got some women’s travel tips of my own, courtesy of a month-long solo travel stint in Thailand, a backpacking excursion through Europe and Scandinavia and the better part of a year living in London with a house chock full of (too many) other chicks (love you girls, but you know I’m right). These may be a little too specific in some cases, but if it can happen to me…It can happen to you, too:

When in Rome: Should you ever find yourself shocked and appalled at the snooty ‘tude and up-turned nose on the Italian shoe saleswoman removing your sneakers to allow you to you try on a pair of way, way too expensive shoes in a posh shop on the Via Condotti, check the bottom of your sneaks. They just might be covered in dog poop. And you just might not have noticed. And this Italian woman in stilettos bending to take off your shoes might just not be as uppity as you think.

Spanish Steps: If it ever happens that you’re walking peacefully down a dark alley, late at night, on the “wrong side” of the Ramblas in Barcelona with your significant other, and a group of five seemingly innocuous, jovial and surprisingly friendly Spaniards approaches you, then try to engage the afore-mentioned significant other in a “football dance” celebrating the country’s recent sporting victory, they might be friendly, nice, football-crazed Spaniards. But they might also be trying to pickpocket your significant other. Which will be unfortunate, but will also sour the significant other on watching football for the rest of your vacation.

More after the jump….

Getting Briefed: No story on this one (sorry to disappoint you, folks). Just know this: should you try to “throw a little romance” into your girlfriend getaway by canoodling with one of the locals in another fine country on this earth, it’s likely said local is wearing skimpier undergarments - perhaps even of the pleather bikini variety - than those to which your American sensibilities are accustomed. What you chose to do with that information is up to you.

Boys will be Boys: If you do not want to see a drunken, 300-lb man’s sheet-white, dimply rear end bared to all the world in a fit of sportsman’s glee, then do not walk down a pub-lined street in Dublin at precisely the moment Ireland crushes Wales in Rugby.

Something’s Fishy: Keep in mind that the smell you just can’t escape that’s rudely accosting you as you try to get some zzzs while squeezed into the top bunk of a sleeper seat on an overnight train rumbling across Thailand might just not be coming from the woman with the large, mysterious basket in the sleeper seat below. It also might not be coming from the group of barefoot fisherman huddled across the aisle. It might be coming from your backpack, which the guy you hired to drive you to the train station dropped in a puddle of fish oil when you weren’t looking.

Sure footing: When you encounter a toilet set-up in another country involving foot pads or some other indicator for where you should put your feet prior to relieving yourself, use them. Do not think to yourself, oh, these are only “suggestions, mere guidelines.” No, they are there for a very precise reason.

Be Scared, But Only a Little: At just the moment that you’re about to cry because it’s 11 p.m., and you’re on the wrong bus, which you’ve just realized, to a town that’s not even mentioned in the stupid guidebook, and you’re standing in the aisle with your towering backpack because there are no seats left, and you are imagining yourself sleeping on the streets with stray chickens once you arrive at your destination in the dark in two hours, a very fatherly German man might spot you, notice you are out of your element, inquire as to your plight and offer to let you stay at his home, just a few miles up the road. You might wonder whether your family will ever find you if this German man turns out to be a psycho expat who buries you alive in his backyard, but it might also turn out that he is a kind family-man whose wife will greet you at the door, give you a place to shower, sleep and then put you on the right bus the next morning.

Do you have any travel tips for women? Share them by posting a comment. Or get in touch with me directly at lsanders (at) kayak (dot) com.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Tips, Travel Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.