Laurie's light travel travel tips

Anyone can visit Paris, LA, New York or San Francisco. But it takes some pluck and imagination to plan a vacation to a place that might not have had a million movies shot there, or where Zagat or Fodor's frequent. In that vein, I am introducing you to ten towns less traveled and hope you'll see what I see in them. First: I've been coming to South Texas and specifically, the seaside city of Corpus Christi, since I was a baby. My grandmother lived in a house in a small town just west of here, and taught me to roam the beaches at "Padre" to cull shells. We'd Elmer Glue them to cigar boxes (not sure where those boxes came from because my Southern Baptist grandma certainly didn't condone smoking!) and create cherished mementos. It's been nearly 30 years since she passed, but when my bare feet hit the sand of these Gulf of Mexico beaches I can still recall that joy. You should visit Corpus if you're looking for a slower pace than Austin or Houston,...

Responsible tourism is not only about taking an organic approach to travel, such as "using outhouses and sleeping in a yurt," but according to the PR for NightSwapping , which bills itself as the new player in the home-stay accommodation industry, it means getting back to basics. Why run one's credit card and rack up debt, not to mention mounds of paperwork and regret, when we can just hit "send" and share our homes? Everyone's heard about AirBNB , but it's not the only entity to cash in on the marriage between low budget and high adventure. Launched over a year ago, NightSwapping now welcomes some 10,000 new members every month, touting a 'back to the roots' way of travelling where no money changes hands. It all reminds this examiner of that scene in "The Holiday," in which Kate Winslet's character e-mails Carmeron Diaz's character - or maybe that's the wrong way round - and they end up swapping homes. I'm in. At Ni...