cigalechanta

Extra batteries for your camera!

internetexplorer

Never say never.
I've had one of my VISA credit cards for more than 10 years, it's a Platinum card now. I'd used it overseas many times in those 10 years and had never called my credit card company before I left home.
But last year , about a month before I was going to travel , I booked Eurtostar tickets online . A couple of days later, when the train tickets were posted to my VISA account , I received a call from a person in the fraud department my card's issuer.
The person wanted to verify that it was I who had purchased the tickets . The 'out of pattern' charge to a non US company had triggered the possibility of a stolen card ( when all the overseas charges from previous years never had).
You can bet that from then on I take the few minutes to call my VISA card issuers and let them know I will be using my cards out of the country. All I need to tell them are the dates I'll be out of the US and the countries where I will be using the cards.

Robespierre

Batteries are sold in Europe. The battery was invented in Europe by Alessandro Volta, a European. It is not necessary to import batteries into Europe.

cigalechanta

that's not the point, you can be taking a photo when the camera freezes and you are nowhere near a shop to buy a battery, so always bring one.

Robespierre

Oh. I thought most people keep track of their camera's battery condition, and replace it when it's nearly depleted.

Never mind.

Scarlett

I thought digital batteries were expensive? We have two with us when we travel so we don't have to find a store and buy one.
aduren,
You can count me in the planned and ready for everything group. I dislike just dashing out the door and hoping that things will go smoothly. I just hate it when the time I would like to be spending tasting wines or admiring something in a museum, is spent messing about with red tape on the phone with a Bank!
m_kingdom, you have obviously not flown to the US and back..you may see it as just a plane journey away, but I have dashed from London to Paris and back in a weekend and it is nothing like flying from NYC to Paris or London. And 6 - 7 hours of flying is not just a plane journey away- it is overnight or all day. Not 2-3 hours.
Some people enjoy calling themselves unorganized or spur of the moment types, but I wonder how much they really plan and how much they might miss, due to not having planned their trip well...just curious.

goatee

Not to mention that in Europe there are plenty more pickpockets than you would encounter in the U.S.! Besides, if you're in a foreign country, you're in for a lot of hassle getting your passport replaced if it becomes lost, because you simply can't go home without a passport. If you're travelling in your own country, you won't even need your passport obviously.

Clifton

<i>Sod it! What's the worst that could happen.</i>

Best thought I've yet seen posted on here, Sheila. While I'm sure I'll always make a few allowances so that we don't completely lose out on our miserly annual holiday allotment, I like that like attitude immensely.

I would think if vast numbers of American tourists were disappearing in Europe for lack of vacation planning, some media outlet might have mentioned it by now.

Check the stove, lock the house if you have something worth stealing. Grab your passport, tickets, 2 credit/debit cards, a couple of changes of clothes and gooooo...

Merseyheart

I think it's a great idea to photocopy important papers, and take important phone numbers along with you. I do all that now, carrying them in a money belt. Have you photocopied your medical insurance card? It wouldn't hurt, too, to have your doctor's and dentist's phone numbers as well. For people who feel this is too organized...remember that you can do most anything on the computer now. I can type this up in a WP program, and just update it for any new trip I take. Or, as someone mentioned, e-mail the information to a web-based account so it's available when I'm overseas. *Be prepared*!

Tallulah

Sheila &amp; Clifton:

Hurrah! Well said! However I am now considering setting up a company that takes care of ALL these things - right down to getting the lettuce out the fridge, Patrick! I never realised that there could be so much demand...

To be honest though, I actually find it rather disheartening that there's so much fear and distrust surrounding something that should be so joyful and life-enhancing. I'm not saying that you should take ridiculous risks or jet off without a thought to the practicalities, but maybe a little bit of old-fashioned sense of adventure wouldn't go amiss...?

aduren

Nah... i gotta agree w/some people, it took me about 37 seconds to call my bank and tell them I'm going out of the country. making copies of my passport gave me an excuse to get up from my desk and stretch by the copier... it's not like us &quot;planners&quot; are planning details of our trip our anything... If I went to Europe and everything was stolen I pro'ly wouldn't come back and say &quot;boy, the best part of my trip was when my wallet was stolen and I spent 3 hours trying to get money wired while my friends went to the Louvre!&quot; Anyway, I think planning what you're going to do every second you are on vacation *does* take the fun out of things, but making a couple phone calls before going to Europe just makes things easier if something goes haywire

Travelnut

<i>I'm not saying that you should take ridiculous risks or jet off without a thought to the practicalities, but maybe a little bit of old-fashioned sense of adventure wouldn't go amiss...?</i>

Tallulah, the precautions discussed above ARE practicalities, and the potential repercussions are NOT my idea of &quot;adventure&quot;. Taking care of business <i>allows</i> the freedom of adventure.

Clifton

Or you could leave all this stuff permanently on file with an emergency contact person back home and just call them if you need any of it. Return the favor during their trips.

This stuff is a lot less likely to be lost along with the real passport, etc if it's not on you.

Sue_xx_yy

Sheila, Tallulah et al.

I don't know about Scotland or London, but many posters here live where they can conceivably wake up to find the power out, 50 cm of snow on the ground, and/or the temperature outside -17. At the other extreme are those who live in places like Pensacola Beach, Florida (that is, they normally live there - right now they are evacuating, courtesy of Hurricane Ivan.)

Not to worry, when one lives where preparation for nature is routine, preparation for a holiday is hardly viewed as difficult, let alone 'disheartening'.

indie

I have never called my CC companies - and traveled in 4 continents - seems like a good idea though.

one thing we have done is availed of free service the police in my city offer - you let them know when you are gone and for upto 14 days they will come by and check on the house twice a day.

They gave us a record of each day and time of visit, anything unusual they had observed each day - like the fact that some idiot had once gain run over the yard (we have a corner lot)
They even cleared out junk mail accumulated on the door!!
happy travels Audren - some day I will be as organized as you and some others (in another thread someone mentioned carrying spreadsheets around)

Tallulah

Travelnut: I guess that we have different ideas of how to take a holiday. I suppose that I just don't want a holiday (rest time) to have to be planned with military precision, which is how much of this feels to ME.

Let's just thank our lucky stars that we don't have to travel together!!? Ha ha!

Travelnut

All the preparations we're discussing are done before departing. None of it requires one minute more while actually on vacation. There's a whole 'nother thread about the vacation plans themselves! Truely divergent personalities are revealed...

canuckuphereathome

from an obsessive planner -
-prepare all my cards for people who are having birthdays when I'm away and have our secretary mail them on appropriate dates.
- Call the airlines to make sure there hasn't been flight time changes (had that happened too often)
- I print off the Currency Exchange sheet, cut it and laminate it on an index card
- do the same for main phrases of country I'm going to including menu items..have 2 index cards back to back for this
- get international drivers license
- buy little plastic bottles/facecloths at dollar store-fill bottles with shampoo, cleansers etc. and then throw away on my last day-facecloths are 3/$1 so I get 5-6 and throw those away after a few uses.
- I do up address labels for all my postcards so I just slap them on and needn't take an address book
- I get all the phone numbers of the places I go for my son so he has emergency contact
I know, I know...but I actually LIKE the preparation for a trip!

LizzyD

I have traveled in Europe with my Amex, yet when I tried to buy my train tickets on-line last week, Amex blocked it. They called the next day to verify no one had stolen my card. They also put a note on my account that we were going to Italy.

Better safe than sorry.