What We're Reading: 12 Products You'll Need This Summer

Caroline Costello's travel accomplishments include surviving a 2 a.m. whitewater rafting excursion in the Canadian wilderness, successfully biking from Dusseldorf to Cologne without a map, and gaining access to a covert pizza speakeasy in New Orleans.

Caroline is an active member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW). Her work has appeared on USA Today, the Boston Globe, AOL.com, MSNBC.com, ABC News, TODAY Travel, and CruiseCritic.com, among other publications.

See recent posts by Caroline Costello

Our weekly roundup of must reads features an outline of innovative products to pack for your summer vacation. Plus, see where to read first-hand accounts of the Grandeur of the Seas cruise-ship fire, and get clever family travel tips from Wendy Perrin.

12 Travel Products You’ll Need This Summer

We love stories about the latest and greatest travel products. (See our advice on the best shoes and summer travel clothes.) Budget Travel‘s gallery of innovative travel products that should go on your summer-vacation packing list includes a lightweight, foldable beach chair; a beach blanket made from the same materials they use for parachutes; and a fancy snorkel-mask camera that looks like something Inspector Gadget would wear. See the products here.

Easy Cures for Family Travel Headaches

In the June 2013 issue of Conde Nast Traveler, ultimate family-travel expert Wendy Perrin offers 10 cures for the headaches that invariably happen when we hit the road with youngsters. Headache number one: entertaining your tired, cranky kids during airport layovers. Perrin’s advice: “Rather than cursing layovers, use them as a fun opportunity for your kids to exercise between flights. Turn them into scavenger hunts.” Get more terrific family travel tips here.

Cruise Ship Catches Fire

More bad news in the cruise industry: Our sister site Cruise Critic reports that Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas caught fire yesterday, and has been rerouted to Freeport in the Bahamas. Cruisers told stories of a hellish ordeal onboard the flaming ship. On the Cruise Critic message boards, Dharma517 posted, “We are ok. Bad fire on deck 3 and 4. Headed to Freeport. Lifeboats we lowered and opened as we stood at 3 am for over 4 hours at our muster station. Passengers were ill (passing out and vomiting). Not sure if we will continue or what.” All passengers are accounted for.

Royal Caribbean is flying the ship’s 2,000-plus passengers back to the U.S. via charter flights today.

After learning about yet another disaster at sea, would you still book a cruise?

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