Our Camera was stolen!
 

First- Thank you to everyone that helped me plan our trip! Every hotel we stayed in was so wonderful. I went with a large group of people-5 families and one elderly couple. They were all so pleased and amazed at the beautiful hotels we stayed in, the restaurants we ate at and the towns we chose to visit! Everytime someone toasted me and said what an incredible job I did planning the trip- I gave all the credit to you folks at the fodors message boards!!!!
Our trip was one of those trips where you don't even want to think about the next day because each day was so wonderful you never wanted it to end!
I plan to sit down and write about everything in hopes that it will help others have as great a trip as ours.
I just watched my sisters slide show with all her pictures and I'm a little depressed because all the pictures in London, the shots of my 6yr old daughter feeding the pigeons in St Marks, our family of five on the bridge outside our beautiful hotel in Venice that I planned to use as this years Christmas picture, hiking in the dolomites, the kids dancing to the yoddler at the restaurant in Castelrotto, all of us visiting the Bottega Wine Bar in Verona and our big group photos on Lake Garda were stolen when we ran into the grocery store at a store in Lake Garda.
It was the perfect family trip and I'm so sad that some stole our precious momentos of that incredible time!
But thank you again to everyone!!!
Vino

So sorry, vino.

Thanks for the reminder that we have to be on guard at all times.

((I))

Vino. The pictures are the real loss.

We never think something like that can happen so fast.

That's a real down side of digital cameras. In the old days you'd lose no more than 36 pictures if the camera were stolen. Now it can be hundreds.
Vino, I hope your traveling companions can put together a collection of some of their photos for you. I know I would if I were in their position.

That's really a shame. The photos are the best memories of a trip. Good thing you were with others who can share some of theirs with you. I never thought about the fact that all the photos are in a digital camera at once. Maybe we should use smaller memory cards--??
I think I'll put my name and home mailing address on my memory card in my camera. Maybe someone would mail it back if it gets lost (or god forbid, stolen).

OK, as dorky as it may look I think it is helpful to have your camera attached to something that goes around your neck...I know, you get strangled when they snatch it from a moving Vespa in Rome but still....

Losing the pictures is worse than the camera loss and as with any theft it leaves you devastated.

In many places, including China, it's easy and inexpensive to take your memory chip to a photo store to be copied to a CD. That's great backup for unexpected events.

Sorry to hear about your camera vino but it's sounds like a great trip all the same.
Since you can't get the photos back start writing that trip report now before the memories fade.

oops sorry didn't see the line about " plan to sit down and write about everything". Looking forward to the trip report.

I compromised by downloading my memory card every night to a Photo Storage Device that holds 30G memory. That way, if my camera were stolen, it is only that days' photos lost. The storage device was usually left at our B&B every night, tucked into my dirty laundry.

Vino, what a shame to lose those pictures! Glad you had a wonderful trip overall. Greendragon, your storage device sounds interesting. I love the digital, but am quite illiterate when it comes to anything else besides pushing the button. Can you tell me a little more about the device? Size? Cost? Thanks, Shirley

Thanks everyone- I'm feeling a little better today after finding that the other families have a few pictures of our family.
I am still a bit sad- maybe it's post trip depression? Is there such a thing??? :)
I'm heading off to Santa Barbara this weekend (staying at the 4 Seasons)- but I'm wishing I was still in Italy!!!!
Chin Chin!
Vino

<<maybe it's post trip depression? Is there such a thing???>>

Absolutely! Most definitely!!
;-)

It's amazing how people implement elaborate procedures for backing up their travel documents (passport, tickets, itineraries), but don't give the slightest thought to the fact that their easily-stolen camera contains irreplaceable mementos of their trip.

Given the price of memory nowadays, maybe it's time to acquire <b>one memory stick for each day</b> and make changing them out part of the recharging ritual. Get the smallest chips your camera requires, for example in my case 128mb would be plenty. This spreads the risk of loss and also eliminates wasting time copying the image files off to another medium. Memory caddies are readily available, such as the one Olympus/Fuji packages with their Xd cards:

http://akamaipix.crutchfield.com/pro...79xdpc128.jpeg

My Storage Device is sort of like a portable hard drive, designed to dump photos. You can get several different sized hard drives, mine is 30G. Every night I'd download that days' memory card to it. Bring the battery/Usb plug in, though, as you need to recharge it periodically!

I would sometimes fill a 512K card a day -- I took 3021 pics on my two week trip. I only used up about 5G on the 30G hard drive.

When I came home, I plugged it into my computer, and copied them over. Now I'm sorting them and picking out the best :)

I bought it on ebay, after doing some research. It was $70.

You can use your (or your kid's) iPod as a backup device, too.

Worktowander-We had three ipods on this trip!!!! If only I had this advice three weeks ago!!!!
V

Greendragon, Thanks for the info. Shirley

http://cgi.ebay.com/30GB-Data-Bank-P...QQcmdZViewItem

This is similar to what I got...