Your Serenity agent (and all other travel agents) can’t discount airfare, but the airlines can, and they apparently can do it about any way they want, such as offer lower fares from some airports than from others. Makes sense, in a way; after all, distances are different. Just the same, you can fly out of some places for less.

Wanna know which airport of the top 100 has had the largest fare decline in the past year? Mitchell International. That’s in Milwaukee, not exactly local to Delaware. But fares dropped 17% in the last year, on average. Have your Wisconsin relatives come visit you–they can get your friends and family Serenity discount for their motel. You can take them to that place in Philly that isn’t there. Such a deal, huh?

PS: Be alert for the next post–Aug 11. It’ll mention a long-distance trip (as in millions of miles) you can do from your back yard, and your Milwaukee relatives can take the same trip.

If you don’t want to miss the post, click the orange RSS feed icon over there on the left, and it’ll be delivered to you.

PPS: This doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but today’s date is 8-9-10. And less than a quarter past 11 tonight, it’ll be 8-9-10-11:12:13 Neat, huh?

We can’t all go to all these wonderful exotic locations I describe in this blog, but we can look at them. All day, too, if you slave over a hot keyboard at work. If that’s you, maybe you use the Chrome browser, developed by Google itself. (If you don’t, consider giving it a try. It’s clean and fast.)

So here’s the geek part: Chrome supports themes. Themes are visual “trimmings” that change the appearance around the edges of software like browsers and media players. Like putting a skin on your cell phone–doesn’t change how it works, it just looks different. Maybe I should say cooler. Under certain circumstances you can see a background picture in Chrome, and that’s where a travel-related theme is nice.

Here’s the theme for the island of Samosir, northwest of Indonesia.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lhplnmlhhojlffceihlgmenbjgbchhhm

It’s free (beats even Serenity’s prices), and here’s what you get:

Samosir theme in Chrome

Pretty neat, huh? Poke around and you might find some more exotic locations. If you find one you like, put a link to it in the comments.

P.S. On another slightly geeky note, be sure to check the post two days from now, Aug 11. It’s about a special (non-commercial) event on the 12th.

If you want to travel overseas you need a passport. You can find all sorts of info about getting a passport at the Department of State’s travel website. If you plan ahead a bit, it’s not too painful, and if you have an expired passport, you can even fill out a form online and send your stuff in by mail. Takes maybe six weeks. But you might not have six weeks. Depending on how much extra you’re willing to spend, you can shorten the time by more than half, or even get it done in one day.

That rectangular logo at the bottom indicates that the passport can be read electronically

I recently had opportunity to renew mine on short notice. Here’s how the “adventure” went.

First, I have an expired passport, so all I needed was that and a filled out form DS-82, which I filled out online and printed. (This is the form you mail in for a renewal if you have time. I didn’t.) Oh yes—I needed to bring my drivers license. And proof that I’m about to travel. And two passport photos. And money, $170 to be exact. $60 of that was for my renewal method—show up in person at the office in Philadelphia. This is the fastest way to get a passport (and most expensive), and they let you do it in person only if you have less than two weeks before you travel (Hence the proof of travel. Tickets or an itinerary will do). At least you can make the appointment by phone, and it’s all automated. Worked slick. Here’s the number, if you want it: 877-487-2778.

So I got an appointment and the confirmation number (another thing they say you need, but I didn’t need it). The US Custom House in Philadelphia isn’t hard to get to, but I was glad for my GPS. I don’t do Philly very often.

Here's where you get a passport in Philadelphia

The appointment gets you a place in line. Well, lines. I got into a 15 minute line to tell them I was there, then a 45-minute line (we got to sit in chairs) until they called your number. They have an automated sign that tells you how long the wait is. Look at it when you register. That’s your wait time. You can go to the nice little lunch room upstairs while you wait, but be sure to get back down to the room before they call your number. I had all my papers in order, so processing went smoothly, and the clerk was friendly. In fact, all the staff was friendly and good-natured. (You can smile in the passport photo, by the way. What’s important is that it looks like you. —I wonder if I could have made a face for mine.)

Then I learned that my passport would be ready in about three and a  half hours! So I got to do a nice walking tour of Old Philly.  Go to my personal blog, Mushrooms to Motorcycles, to get the details about that.

So I showed up promptly at the appointed time, but my passport didn’t show up for another hour. Lots of other folks got theirs on schedule, though. I was just unlucky, I think.

So I’m ready to go! Maybe there’ll be some posts about my trip in the near future. It’s a work trip, not a vacation, so I couldn’t use my Serenity agent (the company is making the arrangements) .

First I’ll tell you my video adventure. I halfway suspect I’m typical. Back in the old days you bought a super-8 camera and a projector. You bought some film and shot the kid’s birthday party, or Christmas, or the family reunion. Then you took it to the developer, then ran it on the projector. Ah yes, home movies, and they were pretty much unedited, jerky, and full of people covering their faces.

Things have changed in some respects with the coming of digital videocams. For one thing, you can see what you shot, delete it, and reshoot at will. Before we left on our cruise (set up by our Serenity agent, excuse the shameless plug) we bought a camera that had the capabilities of a professional movie camera of the 1950′s except you could hold it in your hand (it didn’t weigh several hundred pounds) and you didn’t have to be a pro to operate it. Maybe you should be, but you can operate these things with very little expertise. Our videocam fit in my wife’s hand, smaller than a soda can. It even came with editing software. Our rationale was to learn how to make decent movies on the cruise in preparation for our real purpose. ‘Ysee, my wife is an accomplished china painter, and we have this desire to set up a web page on how to paint china. There happen to be some very good china painters in California, and they are getting old. We plan to use our Serenity incentive airplane tickets this fall to fly out there and shoot some painting lessons to put on our website.

So. Along comes the cruise. We had a great time, and I posted a lot about it way back earlier on this blog. I invite you to go read about it. The first post is here. Well, we used the camera as much to take still photos as to take videos. When we got home, we could watch some snippets, but we couldn’t get the editing software to work. We haven’t deleted anything, because who knows? maybe we’ll figure it out someday. Occasionally we look at the still photos.

My point is that if you plan to shoot video, you can’t do snaphots. You have to plan the video. I can’t pretend to give you good advice myself, but I found an excellent article with some good advice. Go read it before you take that videocam on your vacation.

Have you shot video on a vacation? How did it go?

If you looked at the last post, you know it was about a solar eclipse. Those don’t happen very often. How about a reason to visit the South Pacific that’s always exciting? Such as a volcano that’s been erupting pretty much steadily for the last century. It’s a popular tourist attraction even though there have been three fatalities from people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not virgins getting thrown into the caldera, either. Here’s a shot of the more dangerous north crater:

Tourists don't get this close to the edge

Vanatu has some pretty cosmopolitan areas that offer an airport, fine dining, duty-free shopping, scuba, volcano watching, a really varied topography, and relaxing on the beach. Native vilages are practically in walking distance from the touristy areas. And like any area that depends on tourism, everyone is friendly. Maybe this shot of the place you actually can go looks more romantic:

Technically, you're not supposed to go here, either, but everyone does. Click to enlarge.

You fly there from the US by way of Fiji, another pretty good vacation stop. Talk to your Serenity agent.