Now, this being the age of the Internet, that's incredibly easy. Just go to the right Web site, enter personal details and a credit card number, and boom, Robert's your father's brother. It's just that easy.
I mean, I'm old enough to remember the virtual impossibility of booking a hotel room in somewhere as exotic as Prague just twenty years ago. Back then, phone lines were unreliable, no one returned paper mail, and although you may have had an E-mail address at the time, the chance of a Soviet bloc hotel having it was practically nil.
Just after I paid for our bus tickets online, I received a lovely personalized E-mail from the bus company's reservations agent:
She's asking if I'd like the beef, chicken, or vegetarian menu for the executive class dinner [it's a 14 hour bus ride to Mendoza - you spend the night on lie-flat seats].
How awesome is that?
Best of all, the tickets only cost $40 per person. The flight would've been $110.