First, thanks to all the mechanically inclined gentlemen who stepped up in response to my last column and proposed ingenious fixes for our temperamental automatic garage door. One suggested inserting a toilet paper roll to focus the eye. We went that route, and voila! We could trust the door to stay down when we went abroad on the European vacation of a lifetime.
Amazing how simple life can become with some practical advice. In that spirit, I am paying it forward this month with equally practical advice mostly missing from the travel guides, and gleaned from our mostly wonderful trip.
Relax about theft. With your money belt around your waist, zippers locked on your cross-body shoulder bag with steel-enforced straps, your credit cards wrapped in RFID sleeves, and any spare cash locked away in multiple pockets, relax. You really are the least likely target for those pickpockets and card readers everyone warns you about. Your biggest problem will be unlocking the zippers every time you need a Kleenex. Wear a jacket with pockets.
Don’t relax about lodging. No matter how beautiful the online description, a London B&B that takes an underground train and overground train or bus to get to is not as relaxing as it looks. And “leafy” is not an adequate description of the neighborhood where it is located. Do not take up the owner on an offer to launder your clothes when she has no dryer. Escaping after the first night in wet underwear can be very uncomfortable.
Carry small coins. There’s room for them along with the Kleenex in your pockets. This avoids going through two sets of locks to get into your bag to get into the turnstile to reach the pay toilets that are down three flights of stairs when you are dragging suitcases through an overground train station to reach an ill-advised B&B.
Parlez-vous a little. It is true, as the guidebooks say, that the French appreciate soft voices and attempts at their language. But don’t get carried away, or your questions will be answered in a confusing stream of French. One exception was my mastery of “L’addition, s’il vous plais, or “Check, please.” Never any confusion there.
Read between the lines. When travel guru Rick Steves says – without elaboration – “and I don’t recommend it,” about renting a car to explore more remote areas where you don’t speak the language, there is a reason. He may know, for example, that it will be necessary to hire a cab to lead you back to the rental office because it is 10 miles away and there are no street signs.
Wash conservatively. It is possible that travel underwear, advertised to “dry overnight” actually will. But only the extremely courageous will wash all their travel underwear on the same night and hang it from a clothesline advertised to hang “securely” in a shower stall with suction cups.
Carry paper clips. After spending more time researching how to use your cell phone in Europe than deciding what you are going to see once you’re there, you will probably decide to switch out the SIM card in your phone for one that finds networks more cheaply in the country you are visiting. To do this, you will need to pop open the little tray you never knew was on the side of your phone and switch out cards. This only works if you can pop open the tray.
For that, a paperclip works as handily as a toilet paper roll on a garage door. Carry plenty. When you get home and need to switch SIMs to call your ride home, they are as precious as the Mona Lisa.
Bon Voyage!
Copyright 2014 Pat Snyder
