Monday, April 15, 2013

Irregular activities in Venice


Well we're only a few weeks away now and I've booked our toilet pass in Venice, yup we're all set if nature calls in the island city of canals and water and buses that are boats. The older you get, it seems the more conscious you are of the possible need to visit "the water closet" at any time of the day or night.

So we're all set, just don't tell Rose (my wife) that we're sharing our 7 day, 10 visit, public toilet pass for Venice. I'm not sure what that will look like just yet, maybe they're like those stainless steel capsule biffies that we experienced in Paris many years ago. Those were pretty weird, like a shower stall, all modular and ultra modern and after you leave them they close themselves up and shake and shimmy and moan as they go through their self clean routine, then it's green light and ready for the next needy customer with a couple of euro (or something else) to deposit.

Ah, that brings back many fond memories, Paris September 1988, Rose and I on our grand European holiday, what a wonderful time. It was September and we were pre-kids but trying to get pregnant, that'll put a spring in a young man's step, let me tell you! Jumping over picket fences, that's for old guys. Tall buildings in a single bound, that's how I remember it anyway.

That was a great holiday, how we managed before the Internet though is a bit of a mystery. I remember booking a hotel room in Paris at Hotel St. Merry on the Left Bank. We saw a picture of a particular room in a food and travel magazine and just fell in love with it. There was a phone number so we called them up and booked "chamber #4" for 2 nights, we were in Paris for 4 but couldn't afford to spend all 4 days there.

What a beautiful room, it was housed in the former presbytery of the St. Merry church and had the most amazing flying buttresses right over the bed, just beautiful.

Hotel St. Merry, Paris.

This is the room we stayed in, so gorgeous!


It was in Paris that I met the most charming lady bathroom attendant in the public washrooms under the plaza in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral. Nice lady, I still remember what she said to me, "pissiere Monsieur", "huh?" was my clever response. I suppose she had met more than her share of naive tourists, unused to this unusual situation.

She quickly made herself clear with some further questions, "for the toilet, Monsieur, you stanna hup, or you seet doon?" "Oh!" You could almost hear the gears clicking into place in my far from home, Canadian brain. "I stanna hup....I mean, yes I stand up."

"Okay, 10 franks" Business gratefully concluded!

Fun times, but whatever the case may be with these public bathrooms in Venice, when you need one, you need one!

We got a few other things figured out also. I am now a registered user of the Trenitalia website that allows travelers to purchase and reserve seats on most of the intercity and high speed trains within Italy. We've already booked our seats from Venice to Verona, from Verona to Milan and then from Milan to Cinque Terra and after a week there, on to Naples and the south.

I was surprised at how easy it was to book on-line, actually. The only problem I experienced was that one of the tickets didn't come through to my email so I'll have to find a way to chase that down and re-print it.

I even booked the exact seats on the trains and got  an amazing deal on some of the fares. It seems that there is a spring sale on in Italy and pre-booked seats for Saturday travel are 2 for 1, wahoo! It ended up saving us something like $200 Euro, excellent because we're going to need to save as much as we can if we have to pay for toilet time wherever we go.

We looked into train passes and with this sale going on, it is way cheaper to book seats individually, and it's pretty easy, so if you happen to be going any time soon, do some research first, you might be surprised.

It's interesting to read about all of the scams that enterprising local scoundrels come up with to rip off unsuspecting tourists. Rick Steves is a guide book writer who specializes in Italy and he warns people to clip their belongings to the overhead racks on trains because when trains go through tunnels as they often do, pffftt, like magic, your bag is gone!

It might be fun to bring a flashlight also and if we hear rustling around when the train goes dark, click, turn it on, flash it around and see what mischief is going on. I can see it now, some perp frozen in place, like a hapless "plucky comic relief" in a Jurassic park movie who heard somewhere that, "they can't see you if you don't move." Priceless!

There are lots of warnings about pick pockets of course and scooter riding villains who try to grab purses and other bags, and creeps who snatch the change or tickets from the dispensers in train stations and any number of other scams to victimize tourists, oh well, we'll sleep when we get home.

I also booked our transit passes for Venice and it is so important to check that out also because from what I understand the vaporetto (water bus) tickets are $7 each and a week long pass with unlimited transport including a special tourist boat that stops at special art and culture locations is only $60, so that gives a lot of freedom from counting pennies if you plan to really explore the city as we do.

I also bucked out for the wi-fi pass for $15 because I have become totally dependent on this tablet and I think it will be incredibly useful if the coverage is good. The one thing that I can't decide yet is the Venice card but I will probably end up picking them up when we arrive. So many amazing churches and buildings bursting with incredible art!

Of course since it's our 30th anniversary we'll most likely spring for a gondola ride and something makes me think Rose won't settle for the $2, stand up, 5 minute ride across the canal. I imagine she has in mind the $60, side by side, cuddling up, sunset version complete with serenade. Come to think of it, that's what she deserves for putting up with me for 30 years!

All Contents Copyrighted by the author, Doug Petry

Thursday, April 11, 2013

The Countdown Has Begun!


It might seem like a strange analogy but it seems to fit for me in this situation and that is, that these days I'm acting very much like the middle aged guy's equivalent of an excited bride-to-be, totally caught up in planning a wedding, except in my case it's a trip to Italy I'm planning.

It's getting harder and harder to concentrate on anything else other than ITALY.......we're counting down the days now and there isn't a lot of time left to get all of our ducks in a row. We're slowly getting there though, and some of the things that I've been thinking about over the last few weeks are coming together nicely.

Thinking about the trip, I thought the best (and lightest) way to stay in touch and write blog posts and edit pictures on the fly would of course be a tablet computer with a little keyboard attached and that's what I'm writing this post on.

Google Nexus 7 with Keyboard

But, of course the great tablet that I bought and believe me I did lot's of research, has one small hitch, it does not recognize any external flash drives, memory cards etc. so it's practically useless because you can't upload pictures to it from a camera in the field. I can't believe these silly tablets can have such a silly flaw! What's with that, goofy Google people?

The good news is that the Internet is full of hackers and clever people who can find a work-around for the mistakes and flaws built into technology and with their help I downloaded a Nexus 7 toolbox and a disc mount software program and unlocked the bootloader and "rooted" my Nexus 7.

Now with a cheap little adapter from china and a memory card reader attached I can upload pictures directly from memory cards to my tablet and from there I can edit them and upload them to Facebook or my blog or website, or whatever. Thanks to the manufacturers screw-up I am now a seriously clandestine hacker type and I have voided my warranty, bought a skateboard and am moving into a downtown loft with a bunch of other geeks. But seriously....thank you anonymous developer, programmer types, for helping me get this done, I love you!

Another of my tasks was to figure out what to do about telephones while we're over  there. Do you just wing it and try to pick up a couple of throwaway Italian phones when you get there? Or set it up from this end with the local cell phone companies? Or is there another way to go? That's what I was struggling with over the last few weeks because Rose and I will most likely be doing very different things some of the time and we definitely need a way to keep in touch.

With kids back home, (adult kids) and some rental properties and the possibility of work needing to get a hold of me, this is a really important question that I researched quite a bit. I found the best solution for us seems to be a company called cellular abroad that has all kinds of different options to choose from and we did a little mix and match deal with them.

I went to the bell web-site and got an unlock code for my cell phone and from these other guys I rented a sim card for 28 days that comes with some minutes built in and a local Italian number. For my lovely, technology averse wife I ordered a new (very simple) cell phone, also with some extra time and a local number. That way we can give out our numbers to people who might need them and any calls we make in Italy will be local ones, problem solved, I hope!

Since I will likely be up and out very early, catching sunrises and walking all over the place while Rose is still sawing logs, It's important that we can contact each other. I expect she will spend a fair amount of time sitting at little cafes people watching and reading a book while I am running around trying to capture some of the beauty, culture and architecture of Italy.

Another big question that I have been wrestling with is camera gear of course.
I think I've got it all figured out now. I bought a new backpack camera bag  for traveling that holds all of my gear and fits 2 smaller portable bags inside that I can take out for the days when I don't need all of my gear.

My new jacket and camera bag-backpack

                                                 
Of  course a photographer wants to have a tripod (but a very light one) and a backup camera and the right lens selection and what about filters? Maybe a graduated neutral density and a circular polarizer are enough? And memory cards! How much is enough storage for a month of serious photography in one of the most photogenic, beautiful countries in the world? Who knows? Ask me when I get back, then I'll have a better idea, but for now, I have around 170 gigabytes spread among all of my various storage devices.

Here is a list of what I'm taking as far as photographic equipment goes.
Sony A77 body with 16-50mm F2.8 lens
Sony 70-300mm G Zoom lens
Sony NEX5n body with 18-55 mm lens
Rokinon 8mm fisheye for NEX
Holga pinhole lens for NEX
Spare battery for A77
Portable-wireless battery charger
Light weight tripod
Carryspeed Pro strap
Cokin graduated neutral density filters
And - ????????




And what about power adapters, they use 220 volt power in Italy with a weird little 2 prong round plug so you need adapters that allow you to plug dual voltage devices in.
Most modern electronic devices have dual voltage capability, but of course Rose wants to bring a hair appliance of some sort so I had to buy a voltage step-down transformer to convert it to 120 volts, no problem.

And have you seen those cool little spinner carry-on suitcases that have 4 little wheels on the bottom? Well I had to have one of those and maybe a small backpack for day trips and in case we buy some souvenirs and outgrow our suitcases (we're just taking  carry-on bags). And of course there are a lot of pick-pockets over there so we need a money belt and the flights are long so we need a good little travel pillow filled with those little bead things and on and on and on it goes!

But our plan is to not eat for the month that we're there so we'll save lot's of money on food. And as long as I've got memory cards and enough money to get into all of the sights, I figure we'll be okay, we'll just survive on the atmosphere and culture of Italy.
And love of course!
(We'll be spending our 30th anniversary in Verona)