Nook has 3G, WiFi and PDF load capability

How did Barnes and Noble respond? Very well, thank you! When I logged into my email the morning after I had traveled, there was a notification, as always, of a purchase of a book at 4:20 a.m. I can tell you I was sound asleep at that time after being awake for 24 hours of travel. Furthermore, I don’t buy books that mention “vampire” anywhere.

Next step: collect my thoughts. Where is my Nook? Couldn’t find it in my mess of dirty clothes and Italian pasta I brought home. Hmmmm. Where did I use it last? I was reading on my last flight from JFK to Ft. Lauderdale. My name is in my loaded travel documents on my Nook (PDF file download is one of my favorite functions of the Nook) so someone could return it. No way is that happening. The scumbag that stole it is clearly not an honorable person.

I called B and N. The support guy had me deactivate my default credit card, which will disable any ability to buy books, even if charged to a gift card credit. He was gracious enough to credit me with the purchase made in the middle of the night since it was a gift card credit. Here is the biggie: Barnes and Noble can deactivate a Nook. No way will the thief be able to use it. Furthermore I have the charging cord/computer USB connector. It is a small consolation to me.

We always buy travel insurance when going on a substantial trip, as this one was (Wales and Italy). I claimed my loss and recouped my investment, down to the cost of the protective film on the screen. While waiting for the claim to be processed, I purchased another Nook since I missed using it for my daily read.

Lessons learned: Barnes and Noble is great, keep closer tabs on belongings, travel insurance is worthwhile.

Protect your travel photos by backing up to a small portable storage device.

This issue has always been a dilemma for me. My compromise has been a large capacity compact flash card that will get me through the day, a laptop onto which I upload my photos and then a flash drive for back up. It works well but is a bit time consuming.

The flaws of my system are the bulk created by the laptop and the time spent transferring. The double back up is an absolute necessity for anyone that is really serious about their photos. It is really easy to lose a card or a flash drive. On a recent trip Windows Vista did us in by managing to complicate the process to the degree that a couple days photos were lost by my husband. It bolstered my case for the double back up. Some years ago before I was wise enough to know better, I had a power surge on a cruise ship fry my hard drive on my laptop and all the photos downloaded to that point were lost. Now I always carry a CyberPower small surge protector when I travel and back up my computer while traveling.

The dream situation for me would be to carry only a small PSD (portable storage device) that uses a direct transfer from my camera but also has a USB port for my flash drive.  Unfortunately for me, I need my laptop for business when traveling so the purchase of a PSD would be extraneous.

There are some great PSDs available, some with multimedia capabilities, LCD screens and huge capacity. Epson, Archos and Wolverine make them as well as many other companies. They are expensive but probably worth it if you have the same concerns as I do. My photographer friends rave about them and won’t travel without them. I have PSD envy.

No Gluten for Me Please

No Dairy Products for Me Please

Sneaking up like an atomic bomb, my newly identified gluten and casein (milk protein) intolerance places me in the cautious traveler category. Eating in a restaurant has become a difficult proposition. Watching me eat a fast food hamburger without a bun brings up memories of a year old kid eating baby food. Oh yes, the ketchup, mustard and mayo are all over my face, hands and sometimes clothes.

How to avoid getting sick because of your food allergies or intolerances? In the year of dealing with a serious issue, I have learned a few solutions. If you read my blog, you know I travel as much as my life allows. My recent 14 day transatlantic on the Celebrity Summit was a real eye opener to the apparent prevalence of gluten issues. In my earlier blog article http://www.zippyreviews.com/travel_blog/cruises-and-cruising/celebrity-cruises-handles-gluten-free-diet I reported that Celebrity did an outstanding job of accommodating my eating quirks. It still amazes me how well informed they were right down to the assistant waiter.

Because of an upcoming trip to Italy, my apprehension caused me to do some research to find some help in Italian. I need to communicate my concerns in any Italian restaurant. Would you believe there is a company www.selectwisely.com that prints small laminated cards in a multitude of languages detailing different food allergies or intolerances or will even custom print one if their standard offerings don’t cover the language or allergy needed? They are very responsive and plainly nice people to deal with.

More hints:  Call your airline if meals are to be served and ask for a special meal. Carefully explain and emphasize the severity of your food issue Talk to the cruise line before you go. You will be surprised at how well they can deal with food issues. Tour companies might be less helpful due to less control over menus in a variety of restaurants. Carry some back up foods you can tolerate. I can always eat Larabars for a quick meal. They are a gluten free company and their bars are delish. They are small and don’t weigh enough to impact your baggage allowance.

Carrying digestive enzymes can lessen the blow if something sneaks through the safety net. It doesn’t totally remove the impact but certainly helps. Let me know if you have any more hints to share.

What is it about Black Friday that causes us to spend, spend, spend? The bargains, of course. The online deals abound and in some cases are more readily available than in the brick and mortar stores. Furthermore there are a lot of free shipping deals. Who wants to get up at 3 a.m. to wait in line? Not me.

The avid traveler on your shopping list will love you if you buy them a holiday gift that makes their travel easier and more comfortable. How about a netbook? We are leaving today for Europe. I bought my husband a netbook as an early Christmas gift so that he can take it along. He is thrilled with the convenience and size.

There isn’t an avid traveler around that doesn’t love to read about their destinations. Part of the fun of any trip is the planning for most of us. Who doesn’t like to know about the airport bus in Barcelona that takes you within a block of your hotel and saves you 25 Euros? Lonely Planet books tend to have a lot of that type of useful information.

One of my discoveries last year was the spinner type suitcase. I sing its praises to anyone that will listen. It saves my bad back on a trip because it reduces the strain. Furthermore my carry on spinner rolls down the aisles of planes so easily that you wonder why anyone with carry ons would use any other type of suitcase. Treat your avid traveler with one. They will love you for it.

Shop early, shop online, save money and aggravation!

The TD Throne

TD is only a laughing matter on the written page. When you are faced with missing your visit to Familia Sagrada or The Louvre, there is nothing funny about TD. How do you get it? How do you stay clear of it? How do you get better?

Everyone knows street food can be a great slice of life in any country or foreign city. It might be the best tasting food you have had in a month. But it might contain a load of bacteria that your system can’t handle. You will know probably in hours, usually about 2 a.m. when you would much rather be sleeping. First clue: don’t eat street food ever.

Keep the bottled water handy. Don’t ever drink the water on a flight. Never. Though there is a movement to require the airlines to actually clean their water storage tanks, there is no guarantee. The reports of a high bacteria count in airline water are true. If you have to brush your teeth onboard, take your bottle with you or ask for fresh water from the flight attendant.

More on bottled water – there are places in the world that we can handle the local tap water but do you really want to find out? Keep the bottled water in the bathroom, again for brushing your teeth and rinsing your toothbrush, taking your vitamins and for quenching your thirst at midnight.

Ice can be downright dangerous. If you feel you can trust the tap water, the ice should be fine. If you don’t trust the tap water, don’t have any ice. Not even just once. Once when in one of the really lovely resort towns in Mexico, the entire batch of visitors came down with TD. There was one major ice supplier, whose purification system went on the fritz. The result was a sad looking bunch of tourists.

Whenever you purchase bottled water, be absolutely certain that the bottle is sealed. There are many that refill those bottles with nasty water and resell them. You drink the nasty stuff and get the germs of the last person who drank from the bottle to boot.

There are reports that chewing a Pepto-Bismol tablet daily when traveling can help prevent The Dreaded TD. Though we can’t swear to its effectiveness, we have never been subjected to TD when we use this really easy solution. It packs easily with no worries about spilling or weight. It is as necessary as our toothbrush when we travel. If you are on aspirin therapy, you should clear this with your physician first.

If traveling to countries where food sanitation is not up to the standards you would wish, you should definitely go for the series of Hepatitis shots. It prevents some types of food borne illness. We also keep our typhoid vaccinations up to date. Typhoid is actually a form of Salmonella and nothing I ever want to experience.

Unfortunately all possible preventions can fail. In that case you must stay hydrated or risk becoming really ill in a foreign country. The CDC has the formula for rehydration. Mix 1 liter of water with 2 T. sugar, ½ t. salt, ½ t. baking soda, and 1 ¼ t. potassium chloride (I have used salt substitute, which I believe is an o.k. substitute). An easier formula is 1 liter of water, 8 t. of sugar and 1 t. of salt. One could conceivably take the components along on a trip, if you feel comfortable carrying a lot of white powders with you.

Be prepared, be careful and you will likely dodge the dreaded TD!

Positive Reviews, Money and Ethics - Do they mix?

Some bloggers have been making cold hard cash or accumulating products for their glowing reviews on anything and everything with no disclaimer of that payback. Up to this point it has been reader beware or be wary of what a blogger is touting. The FTC has now declared that the blogosphere will have to abide by the same rules as newspapers, magazines and broadcast stations. There must be a disclosure if they are receiving any money or freebie for their review.

We will go a step beyond the FTC ruling. We will determine reliability of a positive review based on whether or not we believe there are marketing dollars involved. However, in the rare instance that there is a review site that we still think does a very credible job but they disclose payments, we might include the site in our listings. We will make it perfectly clear as long as we are aware of the payments. We will call out those that we believe are editorial reviews heavily influenced by marketing dollars.  While getting free products to facilitate the review process in and of itself isn’t terrible, it concerns us when we hear of a site that accepts cash or freebies directly or indirectly as a result of positive reviews.

There will always be some reviewers that somehow skirt the issue with the thin veil of the “payout” being offered in the form of marketing dollars. We can’t do anything about their ethical standards but we certainly will try to avoid that reviewer and/or site as long as we are aware of their indiscretion.

It is not apparent whether the new FTC ruling will affect websites that are well respected for their reviews but are not blog sites. One would hope they are included in the ruling as well.  It is our supposition that this initial ruling is intended to trend lightly and only lay the ground work for potential future regulation and/or legislation.

The Mugging Piazza

During our month in China in May, we felt extremely safe due to the lack of violent crime there. Only occasional pickpockets are reported. However, when we are in Europe, our anxiety level peaks. I just read a story on JohnnyJet about a woman who was mugged very early in the morning in Barcelona, which seems to be a hotbed of petty thievery. She admitted to dropping her guard and it caused her no end of a mess. My mugging was at the hand of a guy on a motorbike in Rome’s Trastevere, when stepping out of a taxi. No one in the piazza would help me get off the ground while my husband was making a futile run after the motorbike. It didn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy toward the Romans. Have pity on an injured person on the ground who is asking for help!

How could these occurrences have been avoided? The woman in Barcelona said they didn’t scope the territory well enough, saw the punk and didn’t avoid him as they should have and almost lost further belongings to two others that went after their dropped luggage/backpack. In my case, the guy came around a corner behind me just as I stepped out of the taxi. It was pretty clear to us in retrospect that the cab driver set us up. Lesson learned: don’t ever let your guard down, accept that you are a target, and operate in defensive mode all the time.

Practical tips: scan your passport, tickets, credit cards and other documents and email them to a secure email address. Know where the US consulate or embassy is located and keep the phone number on you in the same hidden pouch where you hide your passport and money. Split your cash between people and then split it again on your person. Have any necessary medical records on a flash drive (and kept on your person in your hidden pouch), registered at an online medical site and/or emailed to a secure email address. Split your medication between suitcases, people or other means so that you have adequate meds until you can replace what you lost – and also make sure you carry the chemical names of your meds with you (generic or brand names can mean little in a foreign country).

Check out both Magellans and Travelsmith for cable reinforced shoulder bags, fanny packs, under-clothing pouches and all kinds of neat gear. The old ounce of prevention adage should be your mantra in travel safety. Recently I found and bought a jacket with zip off sleeves that is the most incredibly designed piece of clothing for travel you could ever find. It has zippered pockets within pockets, magnetic closures, inside hidden pockets – even interior tunnels for your headphone wires. You can safely hide just about anything in this jacket.

Overkill? Only if you deny there is any chance you could be robbed. We are not invincible so don’t operate under that assumption. My arm wasn’t set by the Rome doctor and should have been. He slapped on a cast and sent me on my merry way. Medical care abroad is not always what we are used to in the US. Avoid the need to test that theory!  Stay safe so you have great memories and a happy experience abroad!