Gobal Bag Tag

We're signed up with GlobalBagTag.com. Gobal Bag Tag is a wonderful way to keep track of your luggage. This is how it works: you buy registered tags from GBT and put them on your luggage. On their site you fill in your trip itinerary, including addresses and phones of various places you'll be. Then, if your luggage is lost, the airline (or whomever) can access the site, find out where you are that day, and send your bags to that address. Truly an outstanding idea and not very expensive.

Travel Shoes

I've decided that the whole airline experience requires some changes in thinking on my part. Last trip, the one to the U.K., I wore my hiking boots on the airplane, mostly to keep the heavy critters out of my luggage. But for this trip, I've decided to pack the hiking boots, weight be darned, and wear Crocs on the airplane. I'm thinking that Crocs will be much easier to wear and remove going through the metal detector experience. And Crocs will be so much more comfortable for the hours and hours of flight time. With all those holes they will be cool and comfortable and I won't be looking for a way to remove my shoes when my feet get too hot. I think I'm going to be able to wear the Crocs (I'm taking a chocolate brown pair) on the boat with any sort of attire, from shorts and dress pants and sport coat. Right on.

Travel Insurance

I have spent some days now trying to decide whether to buy "Trip Cancellation Insurance," and, if so, what company to go with. After much bewildered rambling on the internet I discovered sites called "Squaremouth.com and "Insuremytrip.com." These sites will allow you to feed in your trip criteria and then it pulls up all the insurers who would be able to provide you with insurance. We were also interested in medical coverage for foreign countries. Oddly enough, even though we had trip insurance for our vacation to Italy in 2006, I didn't even give it a thought for our trip to the U.K. in 2008. Oh, well, good thing I didn't need it. Rick Steve's recommends a handful like Travel Guard (we used this one for Italy), Access America (Connie's travel agent cousin uses this one), and Travel Insurance International. After much thought I decided that maybe my USAA card (offered to military and ex-military personal) might offer travel insurance recommendations. That idea proved to be my salvation as they recommended Travel Insurance International. I got their "World Wide Trip Protector" plan plus medical coverage for $700.00, or about 6% of the cruise and airfare cost. Naturally, I'd love to save that money, but when you're going on a cruise, delays and cancellations of anything can leave you standing on the dock watching the ship sail into the sunset. Not a happy thought.

Airline Flight gets changed

Well, changes have begun already.  Our flight from Athens to Rome after the cruise, which was to have taken place at 9:00 A.M., is not going now until 1:00 P.M.  Not sure just what we’ll ending up doing for the morning, but I guess if nothing else, we’ll just hang out at the airport and do some reading.  Airlines just love to tinker with your flights once you’ve paid for them.

Brightroam

The Brightroam SIM card for our world phone has arrived safely. This will allow us to avoid the hassle of trying to figure out the phone system in the various countries we will be visiting. Folks in the U.S. will be able to dial our stateside, toll-free phone number and reach us wherever we are on vacation. Pretty neat.

International Drivers License

I discovered recently when I dug out my International Driver's License that they're only good for one year. So, off I went to have a sheet of passport-style photos taken of myself and then to the AAA (Automobile Club) Office for a new license. Now AAA will also shoot the photos for you at a nominal charge of $10.00. But I got my photos taken at my local grocery store for about four bucks. The license at AAA costs $15.00 so the whole affair is very cheap. One thing I didn't know until today is that you have to carry not only the International license, but your United States license as well. I had never read the fine print before and had not taken it on our trip to England or Italy. Good thing no one asked me for it. While at the AAA Office the lady told me that if I had the more expensive membership (I have the basic), they would pay to fly me home from whatever country I was visiting if I were to become ill or injured. That sounded like a good deal to me for the extra $40.00 per year. So, there you have it. One more chore out of the way. Still to do is deciding just what we're going to do in Italy. Concetta wants to see Scily, but aside from that, we're just going to wing it and see how that works.

European car rentals and other tortures

This morning I spent several hours trying to rent a car in Rome. Wow! What a pain. Some of the web sites are so clunky it drives me crazy. And, if you leave it up too long while you compare it with some other site, it times out. At one point I had finally found the car I wanted for the price I considered reasonable. So I left the page open while I checked a couple of other sites. When I got back to the first site, the Alamo company, it had timed out. When I navigated back to the page where I'd just been, they informed me that NOW all the cars available for those dates in Rome where taken. Sigh. Oh, well, I finally found a car with AVIS for less than the Alamo car. I like Alamo because they spelled out the insurance question better than anyone else. That was crucial because my credit card company will cover the insurance except for theft. Alamo clearly states that theft is built in to the weekly rate. All the other companies do not spell that out. Of course, when I called the AVIS company with the question about declining collison but adding theft, they said that theft was built in as well. More sighs. Anyway, I'm supposedly good to go now and a car will be waiting at the Rome airport when we arrive.

Today I also logged onto the Bright Roam web site to purchase the proper SIM card for our world phone. Bright Roam is a great deal because you only pay for the use of the phone. No calls means no charges. It costs just a few dollars per year to be a member. So, the phone that we bought for the U.K. will work in Italy and Greece with the necessary changeout of the SIM card. Plus, they give you a US phone number in addition to the International number so you can give your friends the US toll-free number to call you and it automatically rolls over to the international number. Very Cool! I just need to charge the phone that we haven't used since 2008 to make sure it still works. Hopefully it will.

Master Card World Card Arrives

WhooHoo, my World Master Card finally arrived. I got that card because they claim that they will cover a rental car in Italy so you can decline the very, very expensive insurance provided by the car company. All you have to do is purchase theft insurance from the car company and you're good to go. Master Card has a number of criteria you must follow, including making sure you don't rent for over 31 days, that the contract is in the name of the driver, and that you don't rent anything worth more than $50,000. But not having to buy the car company's insurance is a big benefit. Now I have to start sorting through all the hype and find a car that is large enough to carry our gear, indescript enough so no one will want to steal it, and powerful enough so it can keep up with traffic. I originally signed up with American Express to do this deal, only to find out that they don't do Italy. Are they crazy? Who wants to go anywhere else?

Trying to find Insurance

One of the big problems with renting a car in a foreign country is insurance. If you get the rental company's insurance, you end up paying a bunch of money on top of the daily fee for the car. If you don't, and you crash (or even lightly damage) the car, you could end up responsible for whatever repairs are necessary PLUS whatever income they miss out on while the car is in the shop. Pretty dismal prospects. Thinking to head off this potential disaster, I signed up for American Express rental car protection. They add a small fee if you rent a car with their credit card and they cover whatever you do to it. However, when I read the fine print American Express expressly excludes Italy and a dozen other "high-risk" countries. So, what now? When I started "polling" my other credit cards none of them would cover a car in Italy. So, I'm going to apply for a card that purports to do the job. And if that doesn't work, I'll be buying the rental car company's insurance. I just won't like it. But since I have damaged all four of the last four cars I rented: one here, two in Italy, and one in the U.K., I guess I don't have any choice.

Finding a place to stay in Athens

This morning I spent several frustrating hours reading critique after critique on potential Hotels in Athens, Greece. We have to stay one night in Athens before boarding the ship for our scheduled cruise throughout the Greek Islands and Turkey. Man, what a pain. To read the critiques, most of the available hotels are hot, possessing of tiny rooms, less than clean, and good for not much more than having a roof over your head at night. The surrounding streets are filled with pickpockets, drug users, and denizens of every description. The showers are purported to be dismally small, the elevators equally tiny, and the breakfasts boring and not so fresh. About all most of them can boast is a close proximity to the old part of Athens and the night life. And, most importantly for a blog-writing fanatic such as myself, the wireless internet, if it exists at all, is usually charged for. Finally, I stumbled across the "Lotus Hotel," which is slightly removed from the city center, in a nicer neighborhood, and of fairly new construction. Further, the internet is reported as "free." So, being totally worn out from the search, I booked the Lotus and shall hope for the best. After all, it's only one night and I suppose anything will probably do fine. The cost is going to be about $120.00, is above my budget somewhat, but will have to be okay this time.

Making progress on lodging

Yesterday I lined up some of our lodging in Rome. For our last day in Italy before catching the flight home, I selected the terribly expensive Hilton located right next to the airport. I decided that it would be better to turn in the car the day before and then be able to leisurely walk to our Hotel for the night, then, just as leisurely, walk to the flight the next day. We'd have time for breakfast and, since our flight isn't until 10:00, we have plenty of time to walk across the courtyard to the terminal and check in before our flight. For our first and second nights in Italy after the Athens cruise is over, I selected the Colle degli Ulivi (Olive Tree Hill) B&B near Rome. After our experience with the hustle and bustle and lack of parking in Rome in 2006, I wanted something outside the city where we could easily park and ride public transportation into the city. We'll only be there a day before we head for southern Italy, Calabria, and the sun-washed island of Sicily where so many of Concetta's ancestors and relatives came from. This morning I received confirmation from Colle degli Ulivi so we're on for that one. They even have wireless internet, or so they say.

Coaxing Information from the cruise company

After repeated emails I finally learned the needed information on what happens on the final day of the cruise. Chris emailed to say that we would have to be off the boat by about 8:00 a.m., though we would probably be given breakfast. Therefore, it seems obvious that we should schedule our flight from Athens to Rome in mid to late morning. That way, after our two hour flight to Rome, we'd have time to pick up the rental car and drive to wherever we have decided to stay for our first night Italy.