Who doesn’t occasionally fantasize about being whisked away to a far-flung destination on someone else’s dime?

A teen, that’s who.

Granted, this phenomenon is not universally exhibited by all teens; some love to travel and are more than happy to do so with their parents. But for others a week or two spent away without friends, Facebook, and texting marathons can seem interminable. Some teens take to pouting, whining, and sulking to insure that everyone remains aware that they are unhappy. Parents eager to not do battle with their teens every step of the trip are wise to address the problem before ever leaving home—but how?

I’VE been flying since I was a child. I was only 8 years old when I had my first solo flight to Europe. I had to wear my passport around my neck, and I always got a lot of attention from the flight attendants. Many of them would put me in the business-class section, even though I belonged in economy.

I never really appreciated it then. Now I do. I’m a small-business owner, and flying is expensive. I try to stay loyal to one or two carriers so I can at least get upgraded out of coach. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Occasionally, some cool things happen to me during a flight.

This past summer, our cell phone provider wouldn’t unlock our phone so we could get a SIM card—damn you, T-Mobile—which made us incommunicado during our month-long trip to Italy. Sure, we tried using phone cards, but they aren’t so easy to come by in some small Italian villages, and Internet access wasn’t always readily available for us to jump on Skype. And while we vowed to troll craigslist to buy an unlocked phone, we found another alternative with TravelCell rentals.

In Four Christmases, Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon want to take a relaxing tropical vacation for Christmas. But, to get out of dinner with their families, they have to come up with the perfect lie. Like Vince says in the move, "you can’t spell families without lies." So they decide to tell everyone they’re doing charity work, like building houses in third world countries or teaching English as a second language in Puerto Rico, when they’re actually about to board a plane to Fiji.

Travel by plane, despite its many aggravations and expenses, is generally quick – in a matter of hours you can be across the country or on the other side of an ocean. Train travel, while slower, has an element of romance to it. But bus travel. . . bus travel is generally the last resort. Thanks to new low-cost bus services like Megabus and BoltBus, bus travel is cheap, but it can also be slow and unreliable, and there’s no dining car where you can while away the time drinking wine and watching the world go by. Bus travel is getting better, but it can still be a difficult way to get around. Here are eight tips for making the experience more pleasant.

This was supposed to be a feel-good column for the holidays, where I asked readers what kind of presents they wanted from the travel industry, and all of the resulting good tidings left us warm and fuzzy.

And then I talked with you.

And here’s what you told me: First, your holiday list begins and ends with the airlines; and second, you do not feel warm and fuzzy. Not at all.

“I wish they’d stop treating us like idiots,” says Marian Marbury, who runs a Baltimore-based tour company.