Welcome everyone. My name is Kevin Williams, I work
in the Rick Steves Travel Center. We focus mostly on helping
the independent travelers going to Europe, but one thing
that has become a big question for us is, "what do I do about my phone or my tablet?"
So today we're gonna really look at that closely. And I was lucky enough to be at
the right age when sort of the technology and travel were really merging
together. I remember from my very first iPod Touch, which is
basically the iPhone without the phone,
noticing how well it could help me get around, and I've seen the
technology just kind of evolve with it. So today what I would like you to keep in
mind is, if it's a first-time trip, you should really take a look at Europe
Through the Back Door. This is Rick's travel skills guidebook, and it's going
to have a lot of information that will be covered today, along with types of
transportation, information about getting your money, everything you really
need to know before you go. Read it, leave it behind. And if you're
doing your first general Europe trip, trying to hit some of the highlights,
that's where the Best of Europe guidebook could be a good fit for you, also. Today, this is the meat of what we're gonna
talk about. We're gonna look at cost-effective options to stay connected
and communicate with friends back home or people while you're traveling. We're
gonna make sure you understand how your settings should be put together to make
sure you don't get any crazy charges, and we're gonna talk about some apps that
really make your life while you travel easier, rather than make
it harder, or you're too focused on it. And then
the last thing we'll talk about is a little bit of the
Ebooks, pros and cons that come with them. You might want to be prepared to have
some sort of cell phone with you, because pay phones are harder and harder to find
nowadays, much like here, and Internet cafes are definitely becoming a thing of
the past. So your hotel may have a computer in the lobby that you can use,
but because most travelers are now using their own tablet or smartphone, there's a
good chance you're gonna be wanting to use that too. This is what I travel with. I
do take an iPad, I do take a smartphone, and then of course the cables to make
sure thing charge or connect with other electronics. I like to keep
everything together in one sort of bag. So if you have anything
already, it's a good fit. I do use Apple products,
not because I think Apple is superior in any way or form, it's
just what I started with, that iPod Touch, and I don't want to buy the apps again.
So today's class will focus on Apple products and Android products. If you
have a Windows Phone, nothing specific, but I do know their settings are very
close to Android usually. How many people do remember hearing of people on
cruise ships or traveling, coming home to thousands of dollars on
their phone bill. Then it got downgraded to hundreds of dollars on
their phone bill, and at this point phone companies don't really want to charge
that because it's bad publicity for them. People don't like having surprises like
that, they complain, they get vocal, media catches on to it. So for the
most part, the companies have gotten better with their international
plans. But this will let you know sort of the best option for you,
how to have it set up, what kind of device you might need.
There's sort of a mixture of it. Purchase a data plan with your local
provider in Rome while traveling. Some are better than others. A lot of you may have heard of the SIM
card and an unlocked phone. That was very popular for a while but I don't think it
fits every traveler anymore. It will be more for people who need to make
a lot of calls within the country you're traveling or within Europe. And
WiFi is going to be your best friend. It should be free, if not cheap, but free
more than likely, and you'll be able to find it almost everywhere. So WiFi'll
probably be a great friend for you. And then a combo of all of these can be a
good fit for you too, and what I mean by that is, WiFi is probably the one you'll
use most. But then after that, if you do have
friends or family in Europe that you need to call a lot, you could maybe have
a sim card ready in an unlocked phone for easy use, or you could get an
international plan from your current provider for backup, for
emergency situations, and use it sparingly.
Don't panic too much yet, there's going to be more
information coming. Two terms I want to make sure you know
the difference of, and there's gonna be a few terms that I'm gonna
be a broken record on -- you'll hear 'em over, and over, and over,
and I just want to make sure you know them for when you're traveling. But
the first two are data and WiFi. Data sometimes has the code of LTE, will have
4G, or 3G, 2G, etcetera. This is the information when it's
connected either to a satellite or receiving tower, and this is the one that
can get expensive very fast. So know when you're connected to data, and know
how to avoid it when you're traveling. But basically when you're
walking the streets and you want to look
at Google, that's your data. WiFi is the one you have to
actually go out of your way to connect to, but it's usually faster, and again, it
should be free. Normally you pick a network you--lot of times it's locked,
you'll need to have a code, you just type in that code, and then you'll be
connected on that network, free to do whatever you want. When you're on WiFi,
this is when you watch cat videos. When you're not on WiFi, wait,
just save them for later, 'cause you'll use all
your data way too quickly. This is an example of what an
international plan could look like from your provider. Each provider of the big
names are a little bit different, but they have definitely gotten more
affordable. You can see for roughly $25, you can get a basic international plan from
this company. It's gonna still charge you $1.79 a minute when you're traveling, it's
gonna charge you 50 cents to send a text, $0.05 to receive one, and it's gonna
give you 100 megabytes. Now, 100 megabytes at
first may sound okay, but 100 megabytes is not
a lot by any means. The example I like to give
is an email, if it's just text, could be up to 1 megabyte,
that's not too bad. But the second somebody puts a picture
in it, that can become 3 to 5 (megabytes). If you watch a video, again one
of those cat videos or a kid doing something silly,
that could be half your hundred megabytes. It could be all of
your 100 megabytes right then, and then you'd have to pay another $25 to get
another 100 megabytes. So you really want to be careful on the data usage
when you're traveling. You can see next to it they have another
option where you can pay a little bit more
and then you have an allowance, rather than pay-as-you-go.
And then if you didn't do either of those, the true pay-as-you-go gets very
expensive very fast. And if you look to the far side, you'll see the
international travel data. They're gonna charge you roughly $2
for every megabyte. So that's gonna get
very expensive fast. So if you do think there's any chance
you'll use your data on your current provider, you probably want to pay for
the international plan ahead of time. And again, $25 doesn't break
the bank, and it gives you a backup just in case.
Check with your provider though, some are better, some
providers even give you unlimited free data now. So it's always good to double
check with your provider for more specifics. If you want to be able to call
hotels, call your family or friends who live in Europe, maybe you're a family of
five and you just want to have a way to call each other at any point during the
day, that's where you may want to invest in an unlocked phone and a SIM card. The way
this works is, Europe's done it a little different than us for a long time, you
buy the phone you want, and then you buy a SIM card which is the actual company,
that cellular connection, and you put that in the phone. This way you can have
a nice mix of it. You can get unlocked phones here or when you travel. The one
warning I'll give though is prepaid data is not as cheap as you might want to be. SIM
cards are great for phone calls and texts. They're very affordable to buy them
there, and again, if you know you're gonna make many calls while traveling it would
be worth stopping at a store in Europe and buying a SIM card for either your
unlocked phone, or buy an unlocked phone while you're there. I actually have a very basic unlocked
phone that I travel with when I know I'm gonna be making a lot of calls. I
sometimes do guidebook research, and in that case I do have to call ahead a lot,
to either make sure my reservation's ready, make sure the person I'm trying to meet
with is there. I think most travelers don't need to do this as often. I think
most travelers actually can send a confirmation email when they're
WiFi to the next hotel. They can use Google or other search engines to look
at something before they leave. So calling ahead like you had to do even 10
years ago, probably not as needed for the general traveler. SIM cards, they kinda
look like memory cards for cameras but they come in different sizes now, they
also go in different places, often they go behind the battery of a phone. For
some of the smartphones they just go right on the side, they're a micro
SIM card. But again, prepaid data I usually see, it costs
about $20 for about a hundred megabytes. Which is pretty much the same thing your
current provider will do, and you don't have to do the hassle of
buying a SIM card. This is a big reason some Europeans are
starting to go closer to our subscriptions style, it's so that they get
a data allowance that's more affordable, rather than prepaying for data.
'Cause SIM cards usually you pre-pay for minutes for your phone call or for
when you're texting someone. So just think about how much
you really need a phone if you're thinking of getting a SIM card.
And if you do want to get one, you can find them at stores
like this. Now these sort of stores I have actually bought a lot of SIM cards
from them, they tend to be a little more affordable, but it is buyer beware a
little bit. I've had pretty good luck. You can find the bigger names, the more
official stores, big companies in Europe include Vodafone, Wind, Three,
but otherwise you can go in here. And even if you're in a
country, you don't speak the language, charades usually
gets you as far as you need. Basically, if you need the phone, you
point at a phone, and then you point at the SIM card, you smile, it works pretty well. Same thing if you come with
the one you already have, you just say, "eh, eh," go
from there, usually they can figure out what it is you're trying to
do. Same thing if you need to top up minutes, just walk in
with your phone, show 'em the SIM card, have
money ready, and they can help you put more money on it if you've
run out. But let's focus on WiFi, 'cause really, this is the best thing to happen
to travelers. This is what's gonna let you stay connected and not feel like
you're totally disconnected, or have to panic about, "how am I going to
communicate with friends or family back home," or ahead of time when you're in
Europe. WiFi is pretty much everywhere, especially European travel. You'll find
it at most hotels. If it's in Rick's book there's a very good chance there's going
to be free WiFi, 'cause that's a fight Rick has been doing for travelers for a long
time. Some sights have free WiFi, some parks in
Europe have free WiFi, some cities are WiFi zones, I know
Barcelona's trying to get that started, and
some countries are trying to become entire WiFi zones. So
Europe is well ahead of the United States when it comes to WiFi. If you're
not finding any of these convenient options, this is your chance to
go stop in at a cafe. Go to an Internet--excuse me, not an
Internet cafe, they don't exist-- Go to a normal cafe and when you're
there you'll be able to connect to a WiFi. Often you'll have
to buy something, but this is a good chance
to actually get an Italian coffee, go get a French pastry,
just buy something and just ask for the WiFi password, and they're happy to give it
to you. So you can get connected to WiFi quite easily. So WiFi
is probably what you're gonna focus on, but I
wanna make sure you have your phone set up where
you will not be charged without knowing it.
So this is, again, where we'll get a little more detail. You're gonna hear
similar--the same word over and over again, but I
know you can handle it. These two icons--get familiar with if
you haven't already. One is Apple's, one is Android's. Android's can sometimes look
a little different, and I also like to warn right now, Android
has different versions of what their platform looks like.
So when you're looking at these slides, if your Android
phone doesn't look exactly like this one, don't panic, that's
normal and your steps to find these options should
be very similar, if still not exactly the same. Apple has kind
of kept the same style for, like 10 years almost now, so those should look pretty
similar. The first term you're gonna hear a lot is airplane mode. Airplane mode is
a traveler's best friend. It was originally made for people who wanted to
use their phone while on an airplane, because you weren't allowed to have your
data or your WiFi on while flying. So you could turn this on and
then you could use your phone offline, another
word you're gonna hear. Offline means you're not connected to
anything. Offline has data off, it has WiFi off. So
when you do this when you're traveling, you know everything's turned off. If you
go to settings on an Apple phone you'll see it right there at the top. You can
just click it on right there, and very quickly it turns off everything. It will
turn off your WiFi, and you'll notice cellular, which is what connected to your
data, it turns a gray color, meaning you can't change it, and it also says
airplane mode when you know data is 100% turned off. If you want the shortcut, if
you're on your main screen you can put your finger right where that X is, the X
won't be on your phone, just put in that area, and if you push your finger up,
you'll get this control panel. And this is where you can get to some quick options,
you can change your music quickly, adjust your brightness. You can also
then turn airplane mode on right there. Next to it is WiFi, if you want to turn
that on or off. You'll see on the bottom pane there's a flashlight, there's a
calculator, quickly get to the camera, you have a few options right there. On an
Android device, similar settings, you hit the settings button.
Somewhere it should say "connection," like you
see on the top of this version, from there you can go to
"more networks," and within that you can turn
on "airplane mode." A lot of Android phones
also have a quick option similar to Apple's, but you start at the top
and you pull down, and it'll have some of the main icons,
airplane mode is usually one also. Now airplane mode is probably all you need,
but I know people like to make sure they have everything turned off ahead of time.
No one likes a surprise charge, myself included, so you can do a few extra steps
to make sure your data is turned off. First part is, go to Settings,
click on "cellular." You'll notice airplane mode
right now is not turned on, it's in normal settings right now.
So you can turn on--or click cellular, and within
that you'll quickly see "cellular data" and "data roaming." You want to turn both of
those off. So right now it's showing them on, but if you click it, the green
will go away, and now you're 100% sure your phone won't connect to
those. But again, for simplicity, airplane mode is really the one you want you to
practice with, just practice, practice. Android, similar again, go to settings
with "connection" on the top, click "more networks,"
click "mobile networks," and from there you can access your
mobile data, and just turn it off, and also turn off "data roaming."
So all types of phones, these will be similar settings.
I do recommend, before you travel, practice this
over and over again. Practice turning on airplane
mode, practice knowing what works in airplane
mode and what doesn't. You can also practice
accessing your data ahead of time, but it's
really airplane mode I think is the one that's the
easiest, friendliest, and you have fewer problems and surprise bills.
I also recommend before you go, download,
whether it's iTunes or the Play Store, so you can download apps.
If you do it in the United States, it thinks you're from the United States.
If you wait till you're in Europe, it may think you're German and it just makes life
harder later. Also everything we talk about, especially when we
get to apps, practice using them here, but we'll talk
about that a little bit more. Now, connecting to WiFi, I would think
a lot of people have tested this before, but just to play it safe,
those settings are pretty easy. Now on this slide you'll see
airplane mode is on, which then originally turned off my WiFi. When I
click on WiFi though, unlike cellular, you can adjust WiFi. So you click on that,
and you can turn WiFi back on. Once it's back on, you pick the network that you
want. Once you've picked that network, you should be connected. Now you'll notice that
they have lock symbols. Secured networks will come with a little lock symbol, and
I recommend using these kind of connections more than anything else. But
usually you need a password for these, and that should be provided
by either your hotel, a café. Some places
are set up with an unsecured network originally, but then it
takes you to a log-in screen that needs a password, that's okay
too, as long as there's some sort of protection.
I, every now and then, will connect to an unsecured network,
but I won't do anything drastic with it. Meaning I might do a
quick Google search, but I will not open my
email, I will not use my credit card by any means, 'cause it's
just too easy for someone to kind of see what you're doing. But if you just need
to do a quick search on something very basic, where a museum is, that would
probably still be okay so unsecured, but for just personal safety of your
information I would use secure networks. Android, very similar, you can connect
airplane mode and then go back to WiFi, turn it back on, and from there, same thing, pick your network, it'll
connect you right then, and now think about what you have. You have your phone
in airplane mode so everything is disconnected, you turn back on WiFi, so
now you know you're only connecting to the type of information that
should be free. Your phone is not going to connect to a
cellular network where the data charges add up very fast. So WiFi is really gonna
be your best friend when you're traveling, track that down, connect to it. Again, when you're in the
middle of the streets of Budapest, confused on where you are,
it's not a bad idea to detour into a little cafe, order a
cup of coffee, ask for their WiFi, connect, find where you are on the
map, send an email if you need to. WiFi is
gonna make all this a lot easier than you think. I know a
lot of people like to be connected at all
times, but it's easy to disconnect from that. There is one
setting that I want to really make sure you also understand, 'cause
this is the one that will surprise you, you've
used all your data. This is for people who decided to
purchase the international plan from your provider. So if you decide to have
that for a backup, you want to make sure your email and your apps are set up
correctly. If you have it set to be "push," is what the word Apple tends to use,
or "sync," which is what Android tends to use, that means it's
just gonna push it right to your device. This
can take all your data without you knowing it. So you could
have been in airplane mode, no connection, and you decided, "I want to check
something really quick," and you turn off airplane mode, you connect to a cellular
network in Europe, and if your phone is set to "push" or "sync," it feels that
you're connected, and it sends everything that's been building up. So that means
all 100 emails that've been building up over the past two days get
pushed right on your phone, and if there's pictures in
there, if there's links to things, it easily could, all of a
sudden, take all 100 megabytes that you're allowed, without you knowing it. Apps have
similar settings where if you don't set it ahead of time, it could just
automatically update the second it feels a connection. So I would recommend
changing "push" or "sync" to either fetch, which is either a schedule,
or you can go in and actually set it
to be manually fetch, which is the best setting
when you're travel. Set it to manual,
this means your phone will not update apps, it will not download
emails or anything unless you tell it to. So when you're ready to actually use
data you can use this. If you left it in push, it's just gonna do it without you
knowing it. The way you'll get to that is in
settings, you can scroll down the page just a little bit. From there you can
find "mail, contacts, and calendar." You click on that one, it's gonna
take you to this screen where you can pick "fetch new data." You
can see I have it off right now. We'll take you to the next screen, and you
go "fetch new data" one more time, and that's going to lead
you to that push icon, where you can turn it off.
So right now it is set to be off for me. You can even then
go into each app, or each connection, and change it to either be fetch or manual, or
you can also come down here a little bit and in the "fetch" settings, change it to
just be manual also. You can do all of it just to make sure everything is manual,
but again, this will make sure you can really use that 100 megabytes as
sparingly as possible, to avoid having to be charged over and over again
on that limit. So play with your
phone on this one, double-check you have your settings the
way you want it before your trip. Android, similar yet again, but again, they
like the word "sync" rather than "push." So this one you go to
"accounts" on the top, and one big difference I've
noticed using Android is they tend to have you
go into each sort of application. So instead of just going
to mail in general, you have to pick your
Google option, you also have to go to your Facebook option,
etcetera. You wanna make sure
they're all set not to be synced. So once you
click on Google in this example, you then pick your account,
and within there you'll see that it's syncing everything. So if you want to
make sure it's not syncing all these options and Googles,
you'll actually uncheck all of them. That is shown
on the bottom, what it should look like
when you've turned it off, but otherwise when
you open it, it will probably have everything with some sort
of green check, or some sort of option that says "on." You wanna make sure you go
through and turn everything off. Before we look at some of
the communication apps, I'd just like to bring up a point
that's important to me. Lots of people traveled in the '80s,
the '90s, even the '00s, probably without any sort of smartphone or tablet.
And what you kinda did back then, probably, was organize a meeting
point. If you're gonna go two different directions say, "be at that
restaurant at 6pm." Or you organized, "if we get separated, meet here,
meet back at the hotel," get that sort of option put together.
Carry the business card of your hotel just in case you're afraid you're gonna
wander off somewhere. Then you can show the business card and ask,
"do you know where this is?" Or get in a taxi, show 'em that,
and they'll take you right there. I'd just like to say, this still works.
Just 'cause cellphones exist now, doesn't mean you have
to always use it. It's good to still use some of those traditional travel skills
to get around. What you can easily do is pick that time. Now you're gonna probably
have your device, and you know some tricks now where you could use it to
connect. Even if you want to use WiFi with people you're traveling with, one
thing that works now, that kind of meet in the middle of this separation idea, is
if you get separated, you'll both go find a cafe, you'll both get online, and you'll
wait for the other one to send you a message either through email or instant
message, which goes through WiFi, something along those lines to make sure
you can find each other again. Or if you pay for the international plan, that's
that time that you're going to use one text maybe, to find out where the other
person is quickly. So a mixture of both is fine. I know we all love
to just get our phone out and call the person or send 'em a
text, but while traveling, depending who your provider is, it's just
not necessarily gonna be the cheapest or easiest option for you. With that said
though, there are some great apps to keep you connected either at home or while
traveling. I like to start with Google Hangouts, because Google is kind of the
perfect American company in my opinion, which means they're really good about
taking someone else's idea taking, taking someone else's other great idea, putting
them together in one app that they put their name on. And that's kind of what
Google Hangout's done, it's taken a lot of the video
chat, Internet phone call, instant messaging, programs, and put them together
an easy-to-use fashion. If your friends and family don't have a Google account they probably will have to set one up,
but it's free and it's easy. And what's nice about Google Hangout is you can
have multiple people in one conversation, you can just have one-on-one
conversations, you can see at the bottom there's a little phone icon, that actually
lets you do Internet calling at a very affordable rates, usually around
2 or 3 cents a minute. So that's an easy way
to call back home. The video chat works surprisingly
well also, and it can do a whole conference call. And the way it
works is if you have a good WiFi connection, a nice strong one,
it's a great way to just call multiple people at once,
and it does a great job of jumping back and forth on the screen
of who's talking. So if someone talks, they become the big screen and everyone
else goes small. You can also just click on the person you want to listen to. With
this WiFi connection part, while it's in my mind, I do like to warn, buildings in
Europe weren't necessarily made for WiFi. They were made to keep invaders out, so a
lot of old buildings have really thick walls. Don't be surprised if your hotel
is this way, if you don't get the greatest connection in your room, walk down to the
lobby, they always make sure that's the strongest WiFi point. And one thing I've
noticed that I love seeing is WiFi has started connecting travelers. Because
they're in this old hotel, they come down to the lobby to check their email, but
then another traveler does too, and another one, and they start
talking with each other, they start finding out, "what did
you do while you're here?" "How long have you been in Madrid?"
And they start sharing their ideas, building sort of a connection, and so
while they're kinda disconnecting from everyone else, they're also reconnecting
with travelers too. So it's a great way to just meet other travelers, if your room
does not have as strong of a connection as you were hoping for. I do like to bring up Skype
because they are one of the first people to really have this "online call."
I was using it for a long time, I was a year abroad in England back in 2006, and
that's roughly about the time Skype was really getting popular, and so
someone told me about it. And one--I was actually curious how will
I stay in contact with my family back home. Skype made it really easy. You
just connected there, and at that point it was through computers,
which still works, but you connect, you can do video chats--if it's
Skype-to-Skype, for free--you can also use it to call phone numbers, whether
it's in the United States or in Europe. But there have been times when I'm
traveling that--even not for calling home-- if all of a sudden my debit card
isn't working like it's supposed to, I just connect to WiFi, get on Skype, call
the number through Skype, and that way it's only costing me $0.02 a minute. I know
most banks say they have that toll free international number but sometimes it
just does not cooperate, in my opinion, and I've had better luck just using Skype.
You also see my credit there of $4.63. I put $10 Skype Credit on my phone about
six years ago, so it lasts a real long time as long as you're connected to WiFi. And
again, another big reason is, it is free if you're talking Skype-to-Skype, meaning
one person is logged into their Skype account, and you are too. That is free.
If you do wanna make a phone call it will cost you a little bit, but not much. Here's just an example of a way that you
can, you know, you're the person at the cafe on the screen, calling back to your
family who's curious where you are. You can use the video chat, if you have a
beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower in your hotel in Paris,
just point out the window, and just brag a little bit. Skype does make it easy to call.
They take care of all the country code issues for you, so if
you go to the paid calling screen, you just type in the
area code and the 10 digit number, and it'll do the rest for you.
And again, they can do it for landlines or mobile phones for about 3 cents a
minute, so you can easily talk for a while. Another trick that's nice with Skype is if
you want to call a hotel before your trip. You're in the United States,
you really want to stay at this one hotel, but
every time you email them it's not coming back, you're
not hearing anything. So you want to make
sure, "are they open, are they getting my emails,
do I have a reservation." Skype will make that
affordable and easy to do. In this case, you click
the country code area, you find the country
you're trying to call, let's say in this case
we're gonna pick France, and you'll see
right there at the top it puts in the country code. Now you just
need to type in their normal number, the one that they list on
their website, or we list in the guidebooks.
And then you can call ahead. Try and make sure you do it during
their 9-to-5 hours, don't call them at like 1am, they're not
going to appreciate it. But Skype will make it easy for you to
call ahead if you need to. You can also use this when
you're in Europe too. If you're already in Germany and you want
to call your next hotel, connect to the WiFi at your current hotel, call the
number in Germany of your next hotel, and you can keep it more affordable too if you
don't want to try dealing with figuring out a local phone. 'Cause through Skype
it's very easy and affordable. This section is for all the Apple users,
Android users take a little siesta right now. But if you ever use your iPhone, you
may notice some people will have blue text messages when you text them, some
people have green. And this is because of iMessage. iMessage is when it goes
through Apple's own server which is usually through WiFi, but if you're
connected to data it will go through that also. If it's green, it means, it was
sent as a text message, which means it went through a cellular network, your
current provider. So take a look at your phone, go through your text messages, see
who's blue, see who's green. If it's blue, it means you can text them over WiFi no
matter where you are. When you connect to WiFi in your hotel room in Paris, you can
text your friend back home just like you're at still home.
It doesn't matter with WiFi on iMessage
blue-colored text. If the person you want to
text is a green color, that means you have to
actually use either a cellular network, or use
Google Hangouts like I just talked about, or one
of these other programs. WhatsApp is another one that gets
brought up a lot, it's similar to Google Hangouts. Same with
Viber, it's much like Skype. Test all of these if you like, but
the ones I show are the ones I've used for quite
a while, and feel very comfortable with and
like to recommend. Alright, Android users
can wake up again. What I really think your smartphone or your
tablet is going to be beneficial towards is your transportation and your
navigation. Getting around can be a little confusing in a new city. People
definitely can still take traditional maps, I think it's good for backup, but there are
some apps that are gonna make life easier. Really, cellphones have become the
modern-day Swiss Army knife. I mean, everyone has one of these
now and knows how to basically make it do
something for them, and there's a lot more it can do without you
knowing it. So a few apps I like include City Maps2Go.
I know I've told you about two kinds of connections --
does everyone remember data? Does everyone remember WiFi? There's actually a third
connection that's always running but on most phones you can't
turn it off, and that's your GPS. And a big reason for this, the government
says they want GPS always running so if you call 911 they can track you down
easily. Edward Snowden might have given us a few other ideas why they
wanted it on, but luckily a few travel app designers realize the benefit of this.
So even when you're traveling, your GPS knows where you are, even if you are in
airplane mode, totally disconnected from cellular and data.
City Maps2Go utilizes this. First thing it does is
it'll show you where you are on the map, and that's a little
blue dot you see there. It will not give you walking directions if you're trying
to find somewhere specific, but ahead of time you can put pins of where you wanna
go. So the way this app works is you download it, once you have it downloaded
you actually have to be connected, WiFi preferably, and then download the cities
you're going to. You download their map when you're connected to WiFi at home so
that you can use them offline when you're there, and it works very well. This
case it's actually Edmonds, Washington, but it'll show where you are, and then
I put a little pin of where I want to go later, meaning, when you're
traveling you should pin your hotel, pin the train station
if you're gonna be using it, any of the sights you might use. And basically what this lets you do is when
you're ready to head out, you can look and see where you are on your device, and
you can see where it is you want to go. And that little triangle, it also follows
what direction you're looking. So basically, you can also come out of a
Metro tube, that's a big time when I'm usually confused, come
out of the Metro tube, look at that, turn, turn,
I need to go this direction. That's usually enough to
get you there. It's kind of like a traditional map without having to track
yourself down on it. One trick I have learned with it
though is, if you board your flight in the United States and, we'll say, fly to
Amsterdam, the first time you open it, it has a hard time finding
where you are at first, it can take sometimes
five minutes to find you, and that's because the satellites
using GPS are looking for you back at home in the United States or Canada. It's taking
it awhile to find you over in Amsterdam. So what you can do in this
situation is if you can connect to either your data, briefly, or WiFi at your hotel,
that will let it find you like "that." In just half a second it will know where
you are, and from that point on when you're in airplane mode and
completely offline, it knows where to start looking for you a lot quicker.
So that works pretty well to make it even more efficient for you. But
download a lot of the places you're going, pin those important information
beforehand, and this one this one can make getting
around cities very easy. Google Maps is the next one
I bring up, and there's a good chance this will be the
only one you'll need at a certain point. Google Maps has gotten
better and better and better. Google Maps can do a lot of things, but
for it to do everything, it's needed a connection for a long time, which made it
not my favorite travel app. But it's getting better. When you are connected,
you can see you have driving directions, you can use public transportation. And
this is great in big cities, especially Paris and London, they'll tell me what
Metro to get on, which one I need to transfer to, maybe what bus to catch, it
works very well, but you need to be connected, WiFi or data. It can
give you walking directions, and it can even give you biking
directions if you want. And so, when you're connected,
hotel, cafe, it can do all of this, quickly, easily -- it's wonderful. Offline, it used to not do a whole lot
for you, but luckily for us they've updated this. If you go to your settings
within your Google Maps, you can click right here on "offline areas." Once you
click that, you're gonna wanna go to that "plus sign" down there at the bottom.
Once you click that, it's gonna ask you to pick the area you want to download. So
in this case, while I'm connected to WiFi, you do need a connection for this part,
you can start downloading that region. You can download an entire
map of Paris right now. Once you hit download, it's gonna
take some room on your phone but you'll see it starts downloading,
it's gonna have that whole area offline. But the one downfall is when I'm
offline it's not going to give me walking directions. I use that
red arrow at the top to show I am in airplane mode right now, but when I click
"walking" it says "not available offline." If I go to "driving," however,
it does it for me, 'cause it's offline
driving directions. So this is where I say for people walking
around cities using it, it still may be good to double-check by connecting to
WiFi what the walking direction is. 'Cause you don't really want to walk
along the freeway, like it might be telling the car to do.
So within a city, you might want to just double-check things
if you have a chance. But, where it's really big, are
people driving in the countryside. One big question I do get in the
Travel Center a lot is "what do I do about GPS in
Tuscany and Umbria?" Well now, you can actually download
a pretty big area of that. You can see this is a lot of Tuscany and a
lot of Umbria right there. You'll notice that I am connected right now because
I'm going to need to download this area. And, I also have it underlined in the
data area, it's taking 1,500 megabytes, which is a gig(abyte) and a half. Depending
on how much storage is on your phone, this can be a huge chunk of it, and so
you might not be able to download a lot of maps but try and make enough room to
at least get one of these. Once you download it -- it's gonna
take some time because a gigabyte and a half is a pretty big file -- once
it's done, though, you can look up driving directions offline. Notice that
arrow again is showing airplane mode. So when I did this I was
completely offline -- no WiFi, no data -- and it was able to show me how to
get from Hotel Academia in Florence all the way down to the Siena Cathedral.
Once you start driving, it does have the voice navigation with
you, it does tell you the step-by-step of what to prepare. So this is really going
to change things to make it a lot easier on drivers in Provence in France, Tuscany,
Umbria, here. Just get used to it, though. Download this, download your home
area right now, practice using it offline after you've downloaded
your home area, and really drive around, see if it's working for you,
see if it's giving you the right directions. More than likely it will, and just
keep an eye on how much room in your storage these maps are taking. All subways -- for the people in the
cities who are going to be taking public transportation -- I like this
app just because it does give you an option to look at those Metro maps.
And I have been asked before "Aren't those usually free
in the Metro stations?" "Aren't there signs usually
in the Metro stations?" And I say "yes, there usually are."
Although in my own personal experience, once in Barcelona, when I got off the train I
was gonna catch the subway, first time there, I got to the big map, which was heavily
graffiti'd, and I looked where they should have the free Metro maps and they
were empty. Luckily I remembered I had this app, and it truly has
pretty much every city you would need in the app, and it's nice HD
Metro maps. You download the app once, it comes with the maps included
already, it updates them for you free of charge also, and it
really has a wide range, but the way it can work is, here's Paris, for
example -- you can definitely have a very busy Metro map, Paris has one of
the best Metros in the world, and when you're there you're probably gonna
use the Metro more than anything else -- you can zoom in, it stays nice HD detail
if you really need to see closer areas, and it's gonna have a lot of those
if not all of those European cities and just to show that they have everything,
they even have the less impressive U.S. cities which have one Metro line.
So, in this case it's Seattle -- airport up to downtown, so the fact that
they even included that shows you can expect that those
European cities with great public transportation
networks will be available, too. I like to show NavMii --
it's probably gonna slowly fade out for me if Google
Maps truly keeps it up. But NavMii, it was an offline app a
little bit before everyone else, but the way they work is, NavMii comes in
different country apps. So you do NavMii Italy, NavMii France. And they would
boast that they were free offline map apps. And that is true, they were. When I have
tested it, though, I would say for driving it was always about 10 to 30 seconds
behind of where I actually was, and when driving, that's a big deal. I do believe they're gonna get it better
and better as it goes, and it's a good backup for you if you wanted to have
something else to go along with Google Maps or City Maps2Go.
But where it did work great for me was looking up
walking directions. Unlike Google Maps, offline it still
gave walking directions. It is free, and it followed me a lot closer,
'cause you move a lot slower walking at least I assume most of us do.
And there are options if you want to pay for different
aspects within the app. One option is you can pay for different
voices -- if you want Snoop Dogg to tell you where you're going, you do have that
option to purchase that voice in there. So, I don't think you really need to
personally but it is one option for you. If anyone going to Europe is riding a
train, this should be high on their priority of an app to download,
even if you're not sure you're gonna ride a train, I would
download this just so it's ready. DB Navigator is the German rail
company's app, and the Germans put it upon themselves to know everyone's train
schedule anywhere in Europe, it's very important to them. I'm pretty sure the
Germans know the Italian rail better than Rail Italia does. So you can connect
and look up schedules. So this is the one downfall to this app, though -- to look
up a train schedule you do need a connection, WiFi or data, but
there are some tricks to use it offline. But first, just so you get
familiar with it, here's your start screen
with it, but you can go here, and you can just put in
where you're going. So at the top you'll see I was looking
Amsterdam to Paris, I gave it the date, and then it gives me some options.
You can also then easily see that there's the departure time, the arrival time,
how many connections, how long the duration of the trip is. You can get an
idea of which one you want to connect with. In this case you'd probably want the
zero connection, that's second. You can also click the specific route
and see where you're transferring. In this case, has a transfer in Rotterdam,
tells you how long your transfer is, you can even click it again and it'll
tell you every intermediate stop. This has helped me a couple times
when I've maybe fallen asleep on the train, wake up, panic, "did I miss my stop?"
The trains usually tell you what the next stop is, and I've
opened this and seen "oh, nope, I have two
more stops, that's good." And when I say "open this," on
the train I'm usually offline so there's a little step that I like
to make sure you're prepared for and these beautiful pictures
I'm taking is done by taking a screenshot of your phone, and this
is great to have information you searched ahead of time available offline.
And what you have to do -- Android or Apple -- is you press the
"power" button that turns on and off the screen on the side or the top, and the
"home" button, usually the round button on the bottom. Press them at the same time.
On Apple devices usually if your sound's on you'll hear a click, like a camera,
and a flash. Android you have to hold a little bit longer but same thing,
usually some sort of flash or a square will highlight, and that means
your screen has been moved to your camera roll, where your pictures
are that you normally take. So what I like to do sometimes
with Bahn is I'll look up the schedule I'm going to be using, take a
screenshot, and that way when I'm on the train offline later, I can just open up
the picture of what I should be expecting. You can also do this with
confirmation emails. Let's say you got a little bar code that someone has to scan
later -- take a screenshot of it and now you can use it offline. You can
even use that with some of the map apps if you want to make
sure that you have a map for you offline in a picture mode. Although again,
maps have gotten better for offline use but for DB Bahn and everything else
like that I do think it's really good to practice taking screenshots, have them
saved on your phone for offline use. That again is right here. There are a few more
general apps that I think are well worth looking
at before you travel. Of course Rick Steves Audio Europe, and
I'm actually very proud of this one and I know Rick is, too.
Rick has always wanted to be your tour guide,
he always wants to be there with you, but you can't be with
everyone at all times. So luckily, this free app, he can actually give you audio
tours, where he is your guide in your ear. It also has access to all his podcasts
which are his radio programs, and these can range from a guide that he's having
an interview with to an expert who wrote a book about something, and it's a good way
to get you excited about where you're going or learn a little bit more about
the background. The way the app works is you download things ahead of time,
meaning when you're connected to WiFi you download the audio tour or the
podcast that you want to listen to. Once it's downloaded to your device, you
can listen to it offline, 'cause we know you don't want to be connecting while
you're traveling. So download it ahead of time. The podcasts actually work great for
that long flight -- you probably have anywhere between six and 12 hours of
flight time, so if you wanna get more excited about where you're going, just
sit back, listen to that interview, learn something more about your next
destination. Or even if you're renting a car and you have one long trip or even a
train ride -- another good chance for you to just relax and learn without having
to stress yourself too much. But to find information once you download the app, is
you go to "add tracks" and you pick the destination of where you're going. When
you're on the next screen you'll pick those tracks you want to download while
you're connected. In this case you'll see that in the Britain (London) locations,
there's the British Museum, and if you see that little blue symbol, it's from Berlin,
it's the walking, the crossing guard signal in Berlin, East Berlin. That means
it's a walking tour and that's where Rick will be your guide through
your device, through your phone. Below that, you'll see some more of the
general information, whether it's just some travel tips for you, whether it's a
podcast, but anything that catches your eye download ahead of time. It's gonna be
put into your playlist. From there, that's where you can access anything you've
downloaded ahead of time. And then you can just sit back.
Rick has some great walking ones. He even has a few that use
public transportation. There's one that you jump on a vaporetto
on the Grand Canal in Venice, and he'll tell you what you should be
noticing. He also has one around the Ringstrasse in Vienna. And so he keeps
trying to add more and more to these. But while you're listening to it on the
device, you'll see a picture of what you should be looking at, you can
pause it, which works great on those public transportation audio tours,
because sometimes they don't move the same speed as Rick was
recording it, so if there's a delay, it's nice to pause it,
wait for the next one to happen. You can even bring up the map to
get an idea of where it is you're gonna be going, to try and stay on target,
and with that also, if you're having a hard time understanding Rick's thick
Edmonds accent, there are the scripts too, that you can read along with.
So you have some options for you. Tripit is great for the Type A person
who wants to really keep everything organized. I know I, on some of my early
trips, had big piles of papers I printed out just to make sure everything was in
order. And this will help save you some weight, help save some trees, and it does
a very good job of keeping things organized. You can actually allow Tripit
to access your email and it will scan it every now and then and look for if
you have any confirmation emails, whether it's from air travel, whether from hotels,
car rentals, anything along those lines. And you can also add things yourself. You
want to put a specific node about a certain day, but it'll put it in that
chronological order for you -- great icons with the time,
you can see in this older trip, had a flight
Seattle-Amsterdam, then connected Amsterdam to Luxembourg,
stayed at a hotel, little bit later I took a train, and so it just keeps that all
organized for you. The one thing I also like about it is what you're seeing
here -- it saves your past trips. So it uploads new ones,
gets them ready for you, but it saves all the
old information, so in a year from now, when you
think "what hotel did we stay at in Luxembourg?"
You can access your past trips and see everything you did.
And if you want a visual what your trip is gonna look like when you're traveling,
it has this great map feature too, where you can see where it's going. Tripit works decently well offline but
you do need it to connect to update anything new, but once it's updated
it works offline, it just won't pull anything new that you might have
reserved, but that's usually enough for most people, before you fly out,
connect it, it'll upload everything you need,
you're good to go. So Tripit really has helped
us keep that organized and again, I love looking
back at what I've done. Dropbox connects to the cloud, and I
know a lot of people have heard about this cloud that we're all putting
our data in. It's very handy for travelers. One tip that
you still can do but you can shift it is, we've always said have a
printed copy of your passport somewhere in your bag or somewhere just on hand.
I actually think Dropbox is a better choice to put a scanned copy of your
passport within there. They have protection codes, you need accounts to
log in, and this way you can actually access your passport anywhere. Dropbox can also be accessed through a
computer -- you go to their website, you sign in, and anything you've uploaded
to it is available. Meaning, if you do lose your passport or, unfortunately, have
it stolen, you can go to a hotel lobby computer, or even just ask your hotel to
borrow their computer, print your passport, a printed version of your passport is
enough to get into an embassy, and that way you can start getting everything issued for
the replacement. The other documents I think are well worth having in your
Dropbox for travel are things like a packing list, if you're that type of
person to actually have that, to make sure you're remembering what you're bringing
home, and also to put in the phone numbers to your credit card companies. You don't
necessarily need the credit card numbers right now, but just the phone numbers,
so if you do lose a credit card or something is not working, you can open up
that document, see that phone number, and give them a call. Dropbox you can also load
with photos, music, they give you 2 GB for free but if you want to pay for
a little bit more memory, you can. I don't think it's needed for most
travelers but if you are a person who want lots of photos on there, lots of
just music, documents, then you probably need a little bit more. Dropbox works
really great for people who might be going to visit friends
or family in Europe too, and you want to show pictures of
your kids, of your house, of your dog, and not have to carry a whole bunch
with you, you can instead just load them into the Dropbox account,
connect on your friend's or family's WiFi, open up Dropbox, and let
them see those pictures that way, without taking room on your phone, without taking
up space and weight in your suitcase. Google Drive is another version of this.
The main reason I talked about Dropbox though, is I have used both,
and on a side tangent, these phones take
great panorama photos and if you don't know what that is, I
recommend testing it, but it's when you can get a good look at everything
around you in this long photo. When I uploaded those panorama
photos I took for backup onto Dropbox there were just fine. When I uploaded them
to Google Drive they were corrupted and lost forever. So because of that,
Dropbox is the one I recommend more now. But, Google Drive may fix that,
otherwise though, they're basically the same app, depending which one
you like better yourself, but I tend to lean
towards Dropbox. Google Translate can really help
you get over those language hurdles. It's free and definitely
the easiest one to use, in my opinion. There are a lot of
translation apps out there but Google Translate is user-friendly.
For Apple users it has one issue though. You need a connection to look up a new
phrase. You need to connect to WiFi or data to search something,
but if you do a little pre-planning you can put in a lot of
different phrases ahead of time. Put in the pleasantries -- look up
hello, goodbye, please, thank you, where is the restroom, how much does
that cost, please stop, anything along those lines, look them up ahead of time
and it will save it into the stored memory on the app. It may not give you the audio
version where you press it and it speaks it to you, but it will show the
translation and it'll help you get a chance to at least read it or worst case
scenario, show it to one of the people in this case, France, you can
maybe show it to them, a waiter, if you're trying to
say something specific. Android users, you can actually
download the entire language dictionary onto your device for offline
use. Apple, you can't yet. But when you download that dictionary, it's a huge
file yet again, it's gonna take a lot of storage memory on your device, so you may
not need to use that. The best thing that Google has done is, it kind of worked
with what I talked about earlier, they made use of another company's app and
made it in their own. So if you click this camera icon,
right there, it's gonna access your camera and let's say you run into a sign like
this, and you can be completely offline right now, this feature is offline, no
data or WiFi needed, but you see that sign and you say "what does that mean?"
Just point your phone at it after you hit the camera, and if you'll notice,
the French is all of a sudden turned to English on the
screen of your phone. It knew to look at French and (the app)
knew to switch it to English. This option is available in most European country
languages, but it works amazingly well. It's really good for use with menus also.
In Europe I'd say usually the menu has some English but not always, and sometimes
it's nice to double-check what it is you might be ordering. If it's a type font,
it works wonderfully. Handwriting, it doesn't really work. But somehow it's
able to look at that original sign and change it right on the screen of your
device to be offline, and to be in English. I don't understand how it works
offline. I'm pretty sure dark magic is involved somehow, someone in the Harry
Potter universe was designing this app, but it works great. And, just for another
example, again, you point at the sign, the original in German
there on the right, and it will make it English on
the screen on your phone. This was a company called Word Lens. They
were bought by Google and so Google just put it right into their translation app. So
that's the biggest reason my opinion to download Google Translate
if you haven't already. TripAdvisor -- there's definitely some
great things on TripAdvisor and I know some people think that, working at
travel guidebook company, we should hate TripAdvisor. We definitely don't, we
always like to warn though, of two big things with these sort of review forums:
sometimes what we like to call "cronyism" happens, especially in places like Italy
and Ireland, where someone has 30 cousins, and then ask them to leave great reviews
about his restaurant or hotel and then go to his competitors review and list
awful awful information. If you see a hotel or a
restaurant with thousands of reviews, more than likely
most of those are real. The other thing I also like to bring up is
humans tend to like to focus on the negative. It's just what we do. And so if
someone did have a bad experience, they probably went online and wrote about it.
But think about all the good experiences in your own life that you did not bother
to go leave about a restaurant you like. Usually we're driven to leave
reviews when it's negative. But the reason I put TripAdvisor's up on here is
it has a nice feature called "near me now" and this is for people who've kind of done
everything they plan to do and now they're just curious
"what else could I do?" Or if you're hungry and you
wanna find what's near you. I myself am not a planner when
it comes to eating, I don't plan to eat at the best restaurant usually,
it's more sightseeing, sightseeing, I'm hungry now, I want to know
what I can get quickly. But you do need a connection to access this
so, again, WiFi, turn on your data. But my example I used on a
personal trip to Buenos Aires, it was pretty nice to be in the
hotel and be curious, "what is around me right now?"
Hit "near me now" and I saw that there is a Beatles museum
-- the band, not the animal -- and it got me very curious, "what is a
Beatles museum doing in Argentina?" It was actually great way to see that and
it had some personal collection, and just a lot of South American
connections with The Beatles, but little things like that I never would have known
were just a few blocks away from me, without hitting that button. So
there's another option for the extra sightseeing or restaurants you may not have
known were near you. Currency conversion is definitely tricky.
I like XC's app. There's a few of them that are all great but I think theirs is the
easiest to read because it does multiple currencies at once. So depending
how your brain is wired, you could put it to be $20, USD, and you can see
what that turns to in other countries. I personally find it's better to see what
the local currency is and see what that is in dollars. I do try to recommend
knowing roughly what $20 USD is gonna look like for you, depending
where you are. That way, if you're about to buy something, $20 is kind of that
cut-off when you really need to debate, "is it worth buying?" So if you know what that looks like in
the local currency, you have an easier time saying "oh yeah, I'll buy
it for that" or say "wait, how much more is that, actually?"
Some places are easier than others. The Euro right now is pretty close to
the US dollar so that's not too bad, but you can see down towards the bottom, the
Hungarian forint, that gets very confusing very quickly. So roughly,
$22 is roughly 6,275 (forint). That kind of math is a little tricky
to do ahead of time. So the way it works, it does upload and connect to the
current transaction rates. What this means is it needs a connection for the
up-to-date fee, but it will also store the last time you connected, so if you
connect to it in the morning at your hotel with WiFi, it'll get a rate right
then, you can close it, five hours later when you're at a market double-checking
what it is your haggling the price at, you can just open it and it'll do the
transfer at the rate you looked at that morning. More than likely that is the
same rate. If it's not, if things have changed a lot, we have much bigger
problems than that happening. But that one-time connection is probably good
enough for the whole week. But otherwise you can connect it every morning just to
make sure you have the up-to-date or as close as you can for
the transaction rates. World Clock comes with Apple products. Android, there's a lot of free
versions to download but I highly recommend having one of them 'cause if
you're math-impaired like myself, sometimes it's nice to let the machine tell you that
when you're calling home it is not 2 a.m. You can really make some enemies very
quickly if you're calling them at awful hours. So it's easy to use, just put in a few
places of anywhere you might be calling, whether it's before your trip, or
after your trip, and just a nice way to make sure you're not, again,
waking anyone up and them not talking to
you when you come home. And Seat Guru, I like to bring up. Their website is actually a
little bit easier to use, but they do have the app in case you
don't have access to a computer. It does have a flight tracker is another reason
I bring it up, it does need a connection for that to work, but
it's a nice 2-in-1. There's a million flight
tracker apps out there, they all do basically the same thing. Seat
Guru has that with one other feature: people leave reviews on the seats they
had for a flight. So this means if somebody had a a seat that did not
recline, if they're nice enough to leave a warning about that, that's
great. If you're booking your flight in advance, it's worth going on to Seat Guru
and again, I usually do the website, but go in to Seat Guru and see the seat
you were thinking of booking -- have there been any
negative comments, do the electronics work, did the
seat recline, was it too close to the restroom. If your trip is
coming up very soon and you haven't picked your seat and you
only have one or two options left anyways,
do not use Seat Guru. You might regret it when you see
all the negative information about the one or two seats that are left.
So again, well in advance, it's great to get your options. If you
don't have a lot of options, just go with what's left and
hope for the best. Now with Ebooks, there are a
lot of different versions and you can get a lot of information
packed into one little device, with the Ebooks, with a
connection to Internet. I tend to recommend going to the
Kindle Store because Kindle has a nice option being through Amazon, they have an
app for every type of device. You can download the Kindle app for free on any
Apple product: iPad or iPhone, any Android, you can use it on a computer in a lot
of cases, and you can use it on a traditional Kindle reader with the E Ink.
Guidebooks look pretty good, especially on the screens like a tabloid would have, an
iPad. I will say on the E Ink traditional Kindle type readers, maps
don't translate very well. They're not made to kind of be displayed quite the
same way, but the text is the same. The other warning I like to give, the one
big con is guidebooks aren't written like novels, they're not written to be read
from A to B. You jump around a lot in it. You'll see a lot, "for more
information, turn to page 72." With Ebooks it's a lot harder
to do that, in my opinion. But if you're going to six different
countries and need a guidebook for each one, that little bit of a hassle of
jumping around might be worth the weight you are saving by having
six books just loaded in your tablet. So just think about where you're going.
If I was just doing a solo trip to France, I'd be happier just having the France
guidebook because it's easier to go back and forth, but if I'm doing a huge trip
with, again, six countries, I would strongly debate loading up on the Ebook
versions. You can also bookmark pages ahead of time to make a little bit easier.
If you know what page your hotel's on, bookmark it, if you know the sites you're planning
to visit, bookmark them ahead of time, and that'll make it easier to jump around
to the specific things you bookmarked. Just a few more things to make sure
you're prepared for before you go. The tablets can make great camera
accessories, especially for backing up or uploading your photos. I know a lot of
people take photos with their phones now, I'm a little guilty of that sometimes too,
but I do like to take a point-and-shoot camera now and then, too. I have a nice
little Canon one, I think it takes great photos. But in doing that, sometimes I
want to share it quickly too, with people on Facebook or email. So Apple does sell an
accessory that you can connect an SD card, which is the camera memory card, you
can connect it to the iPad and upload your photos. Some of the Android devices
automatically come with one of these readers. Meaning, just take it out of the
camera and put it right into the Android. But what I tend to do actually,
I'll upload all the photos I've just taken, it's gonna take a
good amount of room on my tablet, but then when I have a quiet
moment, maybe in the hotel, maybe a train ride, a bus ride,
I'll start going through my photos, I will delete any that are less than
impressive, only keep the ones that I really like, the ones I want to make sure
are doubly backed up, and then those photos I really did like, I might also back
up again on Dropbox or upload to Facebook, so that they're
somewhere else, too. Multiple backup options.
So that's where the tablets come in really handy, for a bigger screen
to look at. And the tablets are also nice for when you're in your hotel room,
if you want to send emails, I think it's easier to type them out there. If
you want to watch anything, not saying you should be in your hotel room
watching movies, but every now and then, you might want to have a quiet night.
Netflix has expanded to almost every country now so, you get some new things
on that. But again, go out and explore the city but again, I know you might get
tired every now and then. And also with the tablet, it's a little heavier and I
personally don't like to go out and about with my tablet. It truly is my
hotel option. I've been asked many times "if you were to take one or the
other, which would you take?" I would say a smartphone
does a bit more, 'cause it does everything the tablet does but it fits
in your pocket or bag very easily, and so it's a little bit easier to carry around,
lighter, but I do like having both, again, for when I wanted to have a bigger
screen for use in the hotel rooms. Sometimes trains and buses, too. Everything we've talked
about is dual voltage. That means you do not need a converter.
Luckily for everyone traveling, big companies that sell hi-tech electronic
devices, they found it's easier and cheaper for them to make the device work
everywhere, and all they have to do is change the little metal plug
that goes into a wall. What that means to you is
you'll need an adapter, however. Adapters change the end of your
plug to fit the country you're traveling. So that when you see the two-round
prongs, that is continental Europe, that's pretty much all of Europe. The other one
you see there with the three more square prongs, that's the British-Irish plug, and
that's just 'cause the British had to be different. That's just what they do. But
otherwise, your iPad, your Samsung tablets your iPhones, all you need is this and
your current USB charging cable that you use right now. You can put these adapters
right on the end of that, plug it right into the wall and your phone or your tablet
will charge just fine. These shouldn't cost too much if you get
them before you go. You can find them for $1 at ricksteves.com, or you can
wait till you're there, but then they get closer to 5 or 10 euros for an adapter.
So stock up on them, buy a few. You can become people's
friends -- if you hear people asking for one at a hotel lobby,
you can say "I have a couple extra," so you can really
save the day with that. The other thing I recommend:
set up your device's password or the Android pass design sort of
thing they've set up. Do one of those just to make it so people can't access
your phone too easily. Make it that only you can just jump right in there. I know
it's so easy not to have it secure before you go but just, just do it --
it'll give you peace of mind. Apple users, there's a thing called "Find
My Phone" -- really set up that ahead of time, too. Itss a great feature that if you
do lose your phone or it's stolen, if they keep it on, you might have a chance
to see where it is. Most thieves, unfortunately, if they do take your phone,
will turn it off, but if you want peace of mind, you can tell, through Find My Phone, tell
the network to erase everything on your phone the second it senses a connection,
whether it's WiFi or data. Basically it means the next time it's turned on, its gonna
wipe the memory off your phone. Your phone's probably gone
forever, unfortunately, but that important information
on it is gone. So it's nice to have that setup. Android,
you can double-check if there's any apps that do quite the same thing -- I was not
having a lot of luck earlier. But maybe it'll be easier. It is unfortunate if your
phone or tablet's stolen while traveling but it's not like your passport
or your credit cards, which really can just end the trip right there.
Just remember if you are prepared for some of those older travel skills
you can survive if this does happen. But for the most part try and
keep your phone a little more secure. If you have a bag that has a zipper
that's covered by a flap, keep it in there more times. It's harder
for a hand to get there. I do carry my phone in my front
pocket, but if there's crowds, or I'm on a Metro, my hand goes right
there, too, just for extra protection. But the pickpockets in Europe
are very good, unfortunately. You don't have to worry about mugging or
anything like that, but they do want to get things that they can make money
off of -- credit cards, cash, especially. Phones are actually a little
bit lower on the spectrum but they'll take them
if it's an easy target. Thank you for coming in today.
Hopefully everyone's ready. Again, practice with your apps right now
at home before you go. And have a safe and great trip.
