Published in the January 2006 issue of Vegetarian Times was an article called, “Eat-well tips for traveling vegetarians,” by S. McCarthy. The tip that jumped out at me is relevant for any traveler, vegetarian or not. It’s something I thought quite a bit about the last time I was in New York for a friend’s wedding in 2004.

I’m referring to the section in the article that begins, “No matter where you go, plan ahead.” (If planning is what S. McCarthy is advocating, I’m already a fan :). The author suggests that travelers do their homework before arriving in an unfamiliar city by locating vegetarian restaurants and health food stores (organic produce is the best!) in the area to be visited.

One resource to find healthy food wherever you are: The International Vegetarian Union links to directories all over the world. When I looked in my area to see what came up, the link connected to Happy Cow. Only 1 of 3 local stores were listed.

When I travel, I also want to know where wi-fi cafes are. It’s very important to me to be able to maintain the virtual office. While I prefer to stumble across the local character cafe that offers free wi-fi, when traveling in the U.S., I always check the Starbucks Hotspots through T-Mobile before showing up in a new place. (This search service is a little confusing because it doesn’t organize the cities alphabetically.) By far the best search service I’ve run across is through Yahoo. While other “wifi locators” found 0-1 spots in my area, Yahoo found 6 or 7 including ones I didn’t even know about!