there’s an interesting article full of useful tips for travellers in the new york times. i laughed at the suggestion that you check that a british hotel offering a ‘private bath’ actually has a toilet as well as a bath. i didn’t realise this country was alone in that kind of elidation of essentials, the accurate but not correct description. but mostly i like the closing sentiment of this article which i think is great advice for coping with anything not just travelling:

let it enter our heads once in a great while that we might be wrong