Some Travel Tips

by Hubert

My co-author and I got back from Barcelona, Spain, and clearly jet lag was affecting both of us, as we saw each other online today at 8:40 AM my time, 7:40 her time. Usually I'm not up until 11 AM on Sundays.

I hadn't traveled internationally in over a decade, so I thought I'd share some things I learned here.

1. Buy an electrical power outlet adapter for the country you're traveling to. Nicer hotels for tourists will have an adapter you can borrow, but why take a chance? Also bring a small power surge protector so you can charge more than one thing at a time.

2. If you have a smartphone, buy an international data plan. 50 megs ($60 a month) should be enough for a week's trip, and your carrier will pro-rate the change based on when you cancel (along with the bandwidth they charge you for), so if you use half of your allocation, just cancel the plan after it's been active for half the month, and you won't pay for unused data. Maps and e-mail can prevent unwanted interruptions in a trip, such as getting into a soccer game...

3. Don't wear silly graphic t-shirts, because you'll look stupid in pictures. You don't want people asking "is that a bunny pretending to be a penguin?" or "why are you wearing a three keyboard cat shirt in Barcelona?" or "Is that an Egyptian Mario?" or...you get the idea.

4. You don't have to bring a ton of cash with you (just a few hundred) to get converted at the airport into local currency (I brought $800 in cash with me, which was unnecessary). Your ATM card most likely works overseas, if just not at every ATM you will run into. You'll get a much better currency rate on your ATM card than at any currency changing kiosk and international ATM fees charged your local bank are likely low to non-existent. My co-author's fee was only $3, and mine was $0!

Now for me to sort through 4 gigs of pictures and video...