Travel Tips

Some random (useful?) ideas from our recent (honeymoon!) trip to Europe, what worked really well, and what didn't.

• To lessen worries about pickpockets and such (said to be particularly troublesome in some touristy areas and on the Paris Metro), I got a "Metrosafe 200 Secure Shoulder Bag" by Pacsafe, who also have a number of other bags, purses, etc., with similar security features (I got it at Traveler's Depot in Pacific Beach, which also has tons of other useful things for your trip, all collected in one location). I ended up really liking appreciating this bag, and carrying it all the time (as seen here and here); for much of the trip it held my passport, credit card, our plane tickets, Eurail Pass, hotel key, flashlight, Swiss Army Knife, sunglasses, camera, cellphone, and much of our cash. Often it had my jacket folded over it, and occasionally a water (or Pepsi) bottle in one of the side pockets. Yes, it would be a nice score for a thief, but it was very easy to keep secure (between its security features and my wearing the strap across my chest), it meant I only had one vital thing to keep track of (well, aside from my wife), and I spent most of the trip with my pockets empty (aside from a cheap/tiny wallet with a handful of Euros for the day) and worry-free.
  
  Bonus security tip: make good color copies of your passports and credit cards, and have each of you carry the other's copies in a Ziploc bag in your money belt, that way if one of you gets robbed, you still have all the necessary info to get both of you back home.
• If you're going to be traveling around to several different cities, a Eurail Pass is a wonderful thing. Europe has fabulous public transportation, especially trains, and the Eurail Pass will get you onto any train (the bullet trains require a reservation and a small additional fee, the others you just hop on) you want/need on a set number of "travel days" inside a fixed window of weeks or months. When you order your Eurail pass a few weeks before your trip, your eyes will bulge for a moment at the cost (as one lump sum for two people travelling on, say, any 4 days to 3 countries during a 3 week window), but it really does end up being a bargain, as well as being very comforting knowing that most of your travel is covered.
• If you're taking a really long flight, like to Europe, chances are that your plane will offer music and/or movies. On our flights across the Atlantic, there were hundreds of free movies available on the display mounted in the back of the seat in front of you. This is a lovely distraction from the cramped, noisy, cabin. And they provided free headphones, in order to listen to the provided movies/music. The free headphones were, of course, lousy; it wasn't so much their low quality that was a problem, as that they clipped onto your ears, were uncomfortable, weren't very loud, and didn't block any of the cabin noise (these latter two colluding to make it very hard to hear the soundtrack). Fortunately, we both had nice in-ear headphones along for our iPods (good headphones and an iPod are also highly recommended for looong flights). Unfortunately, you can't just plug normal headphones into the funny (dual mono L/R?) jacks they have on the airplanes. You can buy adapters ahead of time, and the idea had briefly crossed my mind (along with 10,000 other things) before the trip, but I didn't manage to get them. So, we were stuck with good iPod music sound and lousy airplane movie sound. Had I managed to get adapters ahead of time, I would have gotten two of these: Sennheiser Airplane Adapter, though I'm sure less expensive ones can be found.
• This one is conditionally recommended (mostly because it's spendy), but we found it really useful: We rented a GSM cellphone from Verizon (it actually comes through their European partner, Vodafone). We use Verizon cellphones at home, and this setup was particularly attractive because they set it up so you can forward your US-based Verizon cellphone to the rented phone, and then people will have an easy way to reach you (if necessary) on your trip — they just call your normal cellphone, and it forwards on through. Also it was really comforting knowing that we had a fixed European (UK, actually) phone number where the hotels and friends with whom we were staying could get hold of us (and vice versa) if anything came up. So, the quick rundown is, the phone was $4 a day to rent, plus $1.50 a minute for any calls we made (you'll likely only use a handul of minutes), plus $20-something shipping... like I said, a bit spendy, but the service was very professional and painless, it came with a nice little case with everything needed (including European power adaptors), I forwarded my phone right before getting on the plane, carried our tiny Nokia friend all over Europe, then dropped it back in the box (with prepaid shipping label) and sent it off, when we got home. It worked well for text messaging, too. My wife, who wasn't at all certain we needed this but went along with my idea, ended up really appreciating that we had it along (when you can call your friends from the train to let them know when you'll be arriving, and they meet you at the station, that's pretty cool).
• Many modern small electronic devices (e.g. iPods, digital cameras) use power adaptors that will happily run on the 230vac power available in much of Europe just as well as on the 110vac power in the US (check the fine print to be sure). You can get inexpensive adaptors (before your trip) that just change the plug format from the two prong (or two prong plus grounding pin) US format to whatever local European format you need, so you can charge your batteries along the way.
  
  And if you're there for vacation, don't bother bringing a computer (it'll work, but you don't need the hassle of keeping track of it, and you should be outside enjoying the sights), just sign up for a gmail or yahoo account, to keep in touch with home, and check your mail from the computer in the hotel or at a cyber cafe.
• Finally, I highly recommend TripAdvisor for finding nice hotels anywhere in the world. You drill down to the area you're interested in, and they have user-submitted reviews of all sorts of hotels, along with information submitted by the hotel itself. It's quite useful to browse their lists of hotels in a city sorted by best-rated/most-popular. We never would have found the wonderful Royal Magda Etoile Hotel in Paris (a few hundred meters away from the Arc de Triomphe, metro station, and Champs Elysses) without TripAdvisor (nor, for that matter, would we have discovered the lovely Tickle Pink Inn in Carmel).
  
  Bonus travel reservation bit: A friend recently turned us on to Kayak.com for figuring out airline flights. Has some interesting advantages over other services, in letting you tweak parameters to see what shakes out.