when staying on the Queen Mary

1. Arrive early. The hotel restaurant and bar both close early, and are both worth a visit.


2. Dedicate a few hours to explore the ship and also your room, there are all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies in both.


3. If you are staying at the QM because you're taking a Carnival Cruise, you can walk from one to the other, especially if you arrange the "Queen Mary early check in" with Carnival.

...when looking for good beer in Vegas

1. If you like people watching, get a seat on the patio at Mon Ami Gabi and order a Chimay. One is enough.


2. While all the strip casinos have cheap beer, only the Monte Carlo has their own brewery on premises.


3. Sprechen sie Deutsch? Want to get away from the bustle of the Strip? Head over to Hofbrauhaus.

...for obtaining absinthe

1. The best way to get the real thing is to find an unopened bottle from before it was banned (pre-1915)


2. Next best is to travel to Britain, where Absinthe was never banned


3. If neither of these are affordable, A Czech company, http://www.originalabsinthe.com/ delivers to the USA.

...to avoid food poisoning in Los Angeles

1. Just because there's a "B" in the front window doesn't mean a place in any less safe, or less tasty.


2. This is not a town in which to order a steak, much less order "rare" or even "medium".


3. Avoid street vendors, especially ones selling something called a "Tijuana dog".

to get the most out of your GPS receiver

1. Even if your receiver has good maps, sometimes it just can't find an address. Check before you go, and if necessary, use a site like Geocode to convert street addresses to coordinates.
2. If your GPS saves a list of waypoints, you can map these onto satellite imagery with TerraData and a lot of work, or a little Perl script.
3. Before you buy a GPS, research the unit you're interested in at Amazon and at http://gpsinformation.net/

...for enjoying a cruise port stop in the Cayman Islands

1. Book a "stingray tour". Reserve well in advance, for early in the day.


2. Remember that restaurants and stores show everything priced in CI$, which are always worth just slightly more than US$. So as an American you'll pay a little more than the price shown.


3. Don't forget to buy rum cakes. Lots of rum cakes. Lots.
   

...for enjoying a cruise port stop in Montego Bay, legally.

1. Bypass the shopping.


2. If your boat is staying more than a few hours, get a $5 taxi to Sunset Beach Resort, and an all-inclusive daypass for $20.


3. If all else fails, be a tourist and just hang out at Buffet's Margaritaville.