Hope you had a good summer. This week brings us crashing back to the reality of work and school – which is all the more reason to plan your next vacation. Coming up, some sites of interest for you family travelers:

• In another country and have no idea what (or if) to tip? This handy chart from USA Today gives you the gratuity lowdown for 77 countries.
• Showing an understanding of other cultures can go a long way to improving your reception overseas. Check out this site, which offers advice on interacting with the citizens of Japan.
• Want to see if your next destination is as pretty as the guidebooks say? Go to Travelistic, a site featuring travel videos made by John Q. Traveler. Anyone can submit videos, meaning you’ll see some raw but authentic footage of destinations around the world. The Travel Channel it’s not – but that’s exactly the point.
• Check out this recent NY Times article on how to tell if your luxury hotel’s room rate is the bargain they say it is.
• We wrote about glamping some time ago, and the trend towards camping in high style continues unabated. Forbes offers 10 Ritzy Rustic Resorts where you can get your glamp on.

copyright, The Resort at Paws Up

If your daughter is a fan of The Saddle Club,  or your son has held onto cowboy aspirations, or you never got over the fact that Santa didn’t bring the damn horse you asked for (we didn’t),  one of the luxury equestrian tours rounded up over at Forbestraveler.com might just be the trip of a lifetime for all of you.

With no skimping on the luxury aspect, these outfitters aren’t just offering just some good old trail-riding followed by a night in a so-so bunk. If you’re on the Aravalli Hill Ride offered by Ghenerao Safari Tours, for instance, you’ll be riding through villages, archaeological sites and farms of Rajasthan, India by day, while spending your evenings in palaces and small mansions that have been converted to historic “heritage” hotels. A bonus? The hotels’ aristocratic owners often live on site and will appear, as the Ghenerao Safari Tours website says, “to bore you with tales of their glorious family history.” (Um, we think something got lost in translation, but we get the drift…)

These top 10 luxury equestrian tours are all over the world, so if India isn’t on your current list of must-visits, how does France, Montana, Chile or China sound? Those are just examples: for the full article with all top ten, click here.