Expedited Passports

Have you ever called your bank or credit card company to report a lost or stolen card, only to find it the very next day? What if the same thing happens after you call to report a lost passport? Here’s what you need to know if you find your passport after reporting it lost or stolen:

• Just like a credit card, a passport is invalid after it’s reported lost or stolen. Don’t try to use your passport to travel-you’ll have to wait until you get a new one!
• Send the passport in to the following address:

• U.S. Department of State
  Passport Services
  Consular Lost/Stolen Passport Section
  1111 19th Street, NW, Suite 500
  Washington, DC 20036

• If you’d like, when you send in your lost passport you can include a written request to have your passport returned to you once it’s canceled. The Department of State will cancel the passport and then send it back so that you can keep it as a souvenir of your international travels.

If you’ve lost your passport and you have an international trip planned in the near future, you can get your new passport expedited. The US Passport Agency offers expedited service to replace a lost passport for an additional charge of $60.00 plus overnight shipping. With this option, you’ll get your new passport within 2 weeks. If you need it sooner, you can apply in person at a US Passport Agency office. If you don’t have the time to spare or there isn’t an office near you, a private expediting company can get your passport for you in as little as 24 hours, with no appointments or waiting in line necessary!

Hopefully, you’ll never find yourself scrambling to get an emergency passport before a trip. However, sometimes bad things happen to good people. You could lose your passport right before an international trip or get called out of the country to deal with a sudden emergency. The US government does provide a process for people who need emergency passports to apply at one of the 15 US Passport Agency offices. You must appear in person, and you must make an appointment first. After you’ve made your appointment, here’s what you need to bring with you when you go:

• Proof of Identification
• Proof of Citizenship
• Two acceptable passport photos
• Proof that you are traveling within the next 14 days. Your travel itinerary or plane ticket will do. If you booked your ticket online, print off the e-ticket confirmation email and bring it with you. If you are traveling for business reasons, you can use a letter from your company on company letterhead.
• Payment. US Passport Agency offices accept checks, bank drafts, money orders, and credit or debit cards.
• To avoid any problems getting in the door, make sure you bring your US Passport Agency appointment confirmation number, too.

What if you need an emergency passport, but you can’t make it to a US Passport Agency office? In that case, you can still get an emergency passport by using a private passport expediting company like RushMyPassport.com. For a fee, expediting companies will deliver your application by hand to a US Passport Agency office and then return it you.  You can have your passport in as little as 24 hours without ever having to make an appointment, drive to an office or wait in line!

Alaska is vast and beautiful, rugged and wild. In recent years, cruises to Alaska have become increasingly popular. On an Alaskan cruise, you get to experience the decadent luxury of life aboard a cruise ship while still getting to experience the 49th state’s breathtaking wilderness vistas. Now, Alaska is part of the United States, so you should be able to get there and back without a passport, right?

Not necessarily. Starting June 1st, if your Alaskan cruise makes any stops in a Canadian port,  all passengers must show US passports to re-enter the US. Many Alaskan cruises leave from the continental United States, sailing out of ports in the Pacific Northwest. These cruises often stop in Canada along the way, so US passports are required for boarding.  The Seattle Times posted an article recently describing the great Alaskan cruises available in Seattle. In the article,  Holland America Line spokesman Erik Elvejord was asked what would happen if someone tried to board the cruise ship without passport after June 1. He replied, “If they don’t have a passport (or other approved ID), we’ll have to deny boarding.”

If your cruise leaves from US soil and doesn’t make any stops in Canada, US passports are not required. However, it’s an excellent idea to double-check before you leave! Also, if you are flying to Alaska, check and see if you’ll have to catch a connecting flight in Canada. If so, you need a passport. US citizens are required to have US passports to enter and return from Canada, even if they never step foot outside of the airport! However, if you have a direct flight from the US to Canada, a passport is not required.

If you need to get your US passport quickly, the most fool-proof way to do so is to go through a private passport expediting company like RushMyPassport.com. Your application will be handled by trained passport specialists and delivered to the US Passport Agency by hand, so you can have it ready in as little as 24 hours!

If you’re traveling abroad with your infant, you’ll need to apply for a child passport before you go.  So, you’ll need to get acceptable passport photos. Many parents soon discover that getting a passport photo of a baby is more challenging than it sounds.  Here are the US Passport office’s requirements for infant passport photos:

• The photos must be 2 inches by 2 inches.
• The photos must have been taken within the past 6 months.
• Baby must be facing forward, looking at the camera and set against a white or off-white background.
• The size of the head in the picture must be between 1 inch and 1 3/8 inches.
• No hats, headgear or cute little baby bonnets, please.
• The baby should have a “natural” expression-i.e. mouth closed, not laughing, screaming or crying.
• The photo itself must be good quality, clear and in-focus.
• The baby must be the only thing in the picture-nothing used to support the baby can appear in the picture’s frame. That includes you, your hands, your arm or your baby’s car seat.
• Pacifier’s are a no-no. (more…)

Valentine’s Day will be here before you know it…and what better excuse is there to travel? Of course, everyone knows that Paris is for lovers, but there are plenty of other exciting, romantic Valentine’s Day destinations that don’t get nearly as much publicity.  Read on for some great Valentine’s Day travel ideas, but remember, if you want to go, you’ll need to get a passport fast!

Best Place For Fairy-Tale Romance

The Art of Backpacking has a a great post up highlighting some potential Valentine’s Day destinations, including Germany’s “Romantic Road.” The Romantic Road runs through southern Germany. It lives up to its name with breathtaking scenery, tiny medieval mountain hamlets, and a stunning 19th-century castle at the end!

Most Unusual Destination Wedding

Do you like scuba diving? Are you ready to “take the plunge” with the one you love, literally and figuratively? The Art of Backpacking’s Valentine’s Day travel post also highlights an unusual destination wedding option offered by Trang Underwater Weddings of Pak Mech Beach in Trang, Thailand. As the name suggests, the company offers underwater weddings in full scuba gear, and for Valentine’s Day weekend, they have a three day extravaganza going on for couples who are ready to “dive in” to a life-long partnership.

Best Tropical Escape

Actress Kate Hudson recently named the Great Barrier Reef’s Lizard Island Resort as the “most romantic place in the world” in an interview with London’s Daily Mail. If you’d like a preview before you travel, rent the movie “Fool’s Gold,” which was filmed at the resort.

Best Natural Jacuzzi

Iceland’s Blue Lagoon is a large geothermal bath where you and your love can soak your cares away amidst some fantastic volcanic scenery.  The country’s recent economic crisis has a silver lining for tourists: a vastly improved exchange rate.

Ready to travel but don’t have a passport? There are a couple of different ways you can get a fast passport. If you apply through the US Passport Agency, you can pay an additional $60 fee and request expedited service to have a passport in as little as two weeks. Of course, that’s cutting it a little close. A better option is to get a fast passport from a private expediting company like RushMyPassport.com. Private expediting companies offer extremely fast passport services, so you can be ready to travel in as little as 24 hours!

Even if you can’t make it to a US Passport Agency office, you can still get a 24-hour passport if you need to get out of the country in a hurry. A private passport expediting company like RushMyPassport.com can hand-deliver your application and supporting documents to the US Passport Agency, and then rush your new passport to you so that you can have it in your hands in as little as 24 hours.

However, when you’re getting a 24 hour passport, you really don’t have time for do-overs. So, it’s important to double-check everything you send in to make sure that it meets government requirements. This includes your proof of identity. There are two types of identification that you can use to apply for a passport: primary identification documents and secondary identification documents.  Here is a list of primary identification documents:

• Driver’s license that has been valid for at least 6 months.
• Federal, State or municipal ID Card with your picture on it.
• An old passport with your picture on it.
• Photo ID issued by the military.
• Your green card with a photo.

If you’re using a driver’s license or a state-issued ID as a primary identification document, it must be valid and at least 6 months old. An expired license won’t work, nor will a license that you’ve had less than 6 months. If you got your license less than 6 months ago, you have two options: Submit another form of primary identification along with 5 pieces of secondary identification, or submit 7 pieces of secondary identification. There are many different types of secondary identification-this page lists all of them with pictures.

When applying for a 24-hour passport, it’s important to get everything right the first time. That’s why you should select an expediting company that offers professional assistance and support. RushMyPassport.com offers an easy online system so that you can track your 24-hour passport application. Plus, representatives are available to chat online from 9 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday, except for government holidays.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to work from anywhere? Imagine being able to travel the world, constantly, without leaving your paycheck behind! That may sound like an impossible dream for someone who’s not independently wealthy, but it’s not. If the thought of traveling the world as a “digital nomad” entices you, Christine Gilbert at Almost Fearless can show you how to make it happen. She describes several options for making your job portable, including becoming a consultant, freelancing, working remotely, and starting your own business. Of course, becoming a digital nomad isn’t all fun and games….as this post points out, you do still have to work, and wrestling with unreliable foreign internet connections can be time-consuming and frustrating. Working on a tropical island is still work, but at least the scenery is an improvement over the view from a cubicle! (more…)

If you have an international trip planned, it’s absolutely essential that you have your passport before it’s time to leave. Since an international trip is such a major investment, waiting for your passport to come back to you in the mail can test even the most serene Zen master. To help you keep your cool, there are systems in place that will allow you to track your passport application as it makes its way through the US Passport Agency.  The tracking method differs depending on how you applied for your passport. If you submitted your application directly to the US Department of State, here’s what you need to do:

• Go to the US Passport Agency’s website, and use this link to check the status of your passport online.
• Enter in your last name. Include suffixes like “Jr” or “II,” but don’t include punctuation unless your last name is hyphenated.
• Enter in your date of birth like this:  MM/DD/YYYY
• Enter in the last 4 digits of your Social Security Number.

You should be aware that your passport application won’t be in the government’s tracking system until at least 5-7 days after you submitted it.

If you use a private passport expediting company to submit your passport application, make sure to choose a company that allows you to track your order.  For example, at RushMyPassport.com, you can track your passport application using our online tracking system 24 hours a day using the tracking number we provide when you place your order.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an extra passport? The New York Times has an article up about the advantages of getting a passport from more than one country.  Although traveling with more than one passport may seem sneaky, like something a spy would do, if you have dual nationality it’s perfectly legal. Getting a passport from more than one country allows you to pick and choose which customs lines you go through, and prevents you from having to advertise your nationality in places where it’s safer not to be an American. Plus, it can make it easier to live and work abroad.

How do you go about getting a second passport? According to the New York Times article referenced above, many American citizens qualify for dual nationality for one reason or another, including “ethnic heritage, religion, country of birth or where their spouse was born.” So, you may qualify for an additional passport without even knowing it!  If do you qualify, you should be aware that getting a passport from another country could subject you to additional obligations, too, including tax obligations and military service in some countries. However, in many cases you can secure an exemption as an American citizen.

Also, if you’re an American citizen, you still need a US passport to enter and leave the US. A foreign passport won’t work! When it comes to getting a US passport, you have two options. You can go through the US Passport Agency, or use a private expediting company. Although the US Passport Agency does offer expedited service for an additional fee, if you’re running on a tight schedule, a private passport expediter is your best bet. They can help you with all the necessary paperwork and ensure that you get your passport in  as little as 24 hours!

The holidays are over…have you recovered yet? There’s no doubt about it-the holiday season is fun, but it can also be quite stressful! If your “holiday” left you feeling like you need a vacation, why not snag a great last-minute travel deal and get going?

Jaunted.com has a post up that highlights some amazing last-minute deals on airfare. For example, if you’ve always wanted to visit the other side of the world, Cathay Pacific has flights to Hong Kong for $795 in February. Or, if you’d rather experience la dolce vita firsthand, AliItalia has awesome deals on flights to Italy-as low as 560.00 per person!  Since the best offers are for flights leaving in February, you’ll get to see the sights unencumbered by the crowds of tourists that flock there in the summer. If you’re dreaming about a ski vacation, check out Alaska Airlines for great February deals on flights to Vancouver. (more…)