The holiday season is coming up fast and it just wouldn't seem right if there weren't some traveling involved. If your family is like ours, you are about to start planning for travel soon.

Like the last several years, our family will be checking the Internet before making all our travel arrangements.

TheTrip.com is a good overall place to start looking for information related to travel. Whether you need to go by air or land (but not sea) find out your best options.

You can not only make standard airline reservations here, but can also check real-time Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) flight data so you know if your flight is on time, delayed or canceled before you go.

A favorite of mine is the airport maps. You can see the entire airport layout and figure out your best parking options. There is an incredible amount of detail on every major airport in the world.

In addition to the other information, you can find an overview of major hotels and the cities in which they reside. It is not the best source, but still a good place to start.

For city information (including maps to get there), check Yahoo! Yellow Pages.

If you need a passport for your travel, check with the US State Department. You can find out everything you need to know about acquiring and maintaining a passport, plus you can even download an application for a passport from the site.

While you're at the US State Department site, check the Travel Publications area for travel tips including "Crisis Abroad," "Overseas Citizens Services," and "Tips for Older Americans."

Also at the same site is the latest travel warnings and consular information sheets. These Web pages have the details on health facilities, entry requirements, crime information, drug penalties, and embassy locations.

If you need to know at least a little of the language before arriving in your foreign destination, be sure and check Foreign Language for Travelers by "travlang." You can select one of 57different starting languages and translate it into any one of the other 56. What makes this site unique is that it not only shows you the words, it actually says them for you via short audio files (assuming you have a sound card in your computer).

Of course you will want to know what your US Dollars will convert to in your visited country. The Currency Convertor on the Net lets you put in the number of dollars (or whatever currency you are converting from) and get the exchanged amount for another currency. If you need more complete listings for currency, check WashingtonPost.com-it has it all.

After all those plans, you will still need to know the weather. Intellicast and The Weather Channel are both good choices and both provide plenty of forecasts and radar images.

Finally, other good sites that I must mention, Internet Travel Network and Microsoft Expedia are both great resources.

So whether you are traveling locally or abroad, check the Internet first for information you need to get you where you are going.