Free Travel and Vacation Information

If you have never traveled outside of the United States this probably means that you do not have a passport and have probably never even tried to get one. A passport will be needed for generally every foreign country you might travel to and is always needed to get back into the United States when you have been out of the country.

If you follow these simple instructions, you should have no trouble acquiring your first passport. Remember, no matter where you are taking your holidays to, if it's not in this country you need this document proof of who you are and where you are from.

The first thing you will have to do is fill out an application for a passport which is called a Form DS-11 which you can get from online and download it. Fill it out completely and then bring it with you when you apply for your passport in person.

You will need to find a place that takes passport photos and it is required that you have them take two photos that are exactly the same. They can be no bigger than two inches by two inches. The photos have to be your full front view of your face, definitely no profiles are allowed and it must be from your shoulders to the top of your head and it must have only a white background. Photo studios and even many post offices will take these types of photos for a fee.

To find your local Passport Acceptance Office you can get on the U.S. Department of State site and find one near you by just putting in your zip code and it will give you a list of offices that are in your surrounding area. When you have found the one closest to you, you can then take all necessary items to them to apply.

You will need to make sure that you have proof of your citizenship in the United States. This will generally be your certified birth certificate or if not born here it will need to be a naturalization certificate or certificate of citizenship. If this is not your first passport and you have an expired one you can bring that instead.

You will need to also have identity proof. This would need to be your driver's license, state ID or some sort of government or military ID. These all will have a photo on them with your most current information for them to verify who you are.

After you have done all of this you can take all of your information down to your Passport Acceptance Office a long with an application fee as well as what is called an execution fee in order to get your passport. You will need to give these fees to them when you turn in your application. This can take as long as six weeks after you hand in all of this.

So it is very important that you get this done several months before you actually plan to go on your vacation. However; if you waited to get your passport, you can pay an additional fee and they can have your passport ready for you in two weeks.

Try applying for your passport from September to February, the reason for this is that there are less people applying for passports at this time of year. You should also note that when taking your passport photo do not even wear a hat and make sure your eyes are wide open and keep a natural and relaxed look on your face when taking the photo.  

Before September 11, 2001 we almost took traveling across country and out of the country by plane for granted. We never even had to stop and think about how careful we needed to be when we packed our things, we didn't have to worry about adding extra time to our boarding wait, nothing like that. We had a far more carefree and probably worry free way of thinking prior to that ominous date. The changes in the past ten years have been monumental and have taken away the innocence that once was.

These changes have been practical as well as psychological for everyone that has anything to do with travel. The majority of the changes of course have been within the airline companies themselves and probably to some extent other types of travel as well. Our entire nation has been given no other choice but to adjust to terrorism.

Right after the tragedy, travel all over the world was nearly immediately reduced and maintained that reduction until just this past year when it has finally shown some signs of increase. Even though travel has been gradually increasing, it still has not reached the levels it once was prior to the attacks on the Twin Towers. Travel at home however; recovered a lot quicker than travel outside of the United States, in fact statistically it shows that domestic type of travel has had a huge increase over the past decade.

With security be tighter than it has ever been the lines are airports are of course longer than they have ever been and that's whether you are flying domestically or overseas, it doesn't matter. So on average people must arrive at the airport hours earlier than they would have prior to 9/11. Today's airline security have been professionally trained and are ordered that everyone is fully searched and all items must be X-rayed so that they can look for things like corkscrews, knives, scissors and anything else that might be considered dangerous and could be used as a weapon.

Passengers now are all required to stand in line at the ticket counter even if they already have their tickets to be checked in and they must show some sort of picture ID whether it's a government ID or their drivers' license or they will not be allowed to board the plane. Your friends and relatives are no longer allowed to say good bye at the departure gate nor can they meet you there to pick you up. Only those with a ticket can get anywhere inside the actual terminals.

The planes themselves are far more secure and they try to have U.S. Marshalls on as many flights as they can and they will shoot to kill anyone who poses a threat to anyone on the plane. The planes themselves have improved cockpit doors that are harder for people to break into.

The changes that have been most profound however are the psychological ones. Americans use to be carefree travelers and have now become quite skittish and tend to now look at certain parts of the world as placed they will never travel to any longer such as any country in the Middle East will generally be off the list for most Americans as well as most of Asia a long with India and Pakistan. They have also become far more wary of those who they travel with when they look as if they may be of the same decent as those who attacked this country on 9/11. Americans were once laid back and trustworthy of most places they once use to travel to, still find themselves unable and unwilling to feel safe or trusting any longer even though a majority of these places have nothing to do with terrorism around the world.