Heading to NYC for my first real vacation of the year. As I was rushing around at the last minute (nothing out of the ordinary there) I mentally noted two travel observations…one pro and one con. Let’s start with the Pro…I LOOOOVE the travel friendly roll on perfumes at Sephora. I just picked one up over the weekend and it is so easy to pack. I don’t have to try and fit my full size perfume bottle in my luggage and worry about a massive catastrophe if it breaks all over my stuff. They have a lot of the top brand fragrances (I chose Flowerbomb) and they are affordable at $18 – $25 each. Unfortunately they don’t have my signature scent (Miss Dior) but that also encourages me (forces me) to try new scents. I’m not 100% sure the quality of the perfume in the travel sizes is top notch, but its definitely passable.

Now…for the con. LA cabs and their inability to take credit cards. Well that’s not totally true…they are supposedly all equipped to take credit cards, but that doesn’t mean they will. If you forget to ask the dispatcher specifically for a credit card taxi, the driver will come up with any excuse in the book NOT to take the card. Tonight he said, “they told me it was a ‘cash only’ customer” (I definitely never said that) and then said he couldn’t take a credit card at that time of night (10 PM). What?? The credit card machine stops working after sundown? Hmm…I’ve been to plenty of establishments who will happily take my card at any hour of the day or night. So already running late, we had to make an emergency stop at an ATM for cash. For the record, I called the cab company and the dispatcher said that all cabs are equipped to take credit cards. Now, I do realize there are arguments for not taking cards, mostly I believe due to the fact that it takes a long time for the cab drivers to be reimbursed. And that’s a fair argument when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, so my question is how can LA cab companies improve on that system? It seems to work fine in other cities around the world. My cab from JFK to Brooklyn had a very convenient automated system that allowed me to swipe my card from the back seat and provided a printed receipt. It even suggested the 20, 25 or 30% tip I could leave (30% tip???). So get it together LA….make it easier to spend my plastic money in a cab.