Lost cameras and memory cards!

Social media can sometimes be very helpful in finding lost things...or even people. Those treasured photos? They could be lost forever if the finder of your camera doesn't post a notice that it's found! Sometimes these stories have amazing results:
You can avoid this so easily! The first picture I take when I insert a new memory card in my camera is of my contact information. Just by writing down your name and phone number and then taking a photo of it could save you a lot of grief.

Parking

When you park in those monstrous long-term parking lots at an airport, take a moment and take a picture of the sign that shows your location. You might be in a hurry now, but it will save you a lot of time when you return from your trip and don’t have a clue where the car is parked.

Trouble in paradise

Kevin and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary this July and decided to go somewhere we'd never been - Hawaii! We flew from Pittsburgh to Honolulu via Phoenix on US Airways. Eleven hours and twenty minutes is a terribly long time to spend on an airplane, but when we saw the approach to Honolulu, we knew it would be worth it.

Our first week would be spent on the island of Kauai, "The Garden Isle", so we needed to switch planes and airlines.

The first challenge we met was in Honolulu. The pilot aced the landing and taxi to the gate, but the jetway did not cooperate. After an hour of waiting for maintenance to attempt repairs, they finally decided to move to another gate. This meant we now had thirty minutes to get to our next flight.

We headed to Hawaiian Airlines to check in, which meant we had to exit the terminal. Sigh. We really hadn't thought this through. We just thought that 90 minutes would be plenty of time to get to our next flight. We didn't realize we had to go back through security to claim our bag and check in with Hawaiian.

We tried checking in at the Hawaiian Airlines self-service kiosk, but were too late.  We got in line to get reassigned. We found out that we could have checked our bags to our final destination, even if the final leg of the trip was with a different airline.

My travel tip today? Ask the airline on which you travel first to check your bags to your final destination.

It all turned out for the better, though. We were put on standby for the next flight, which was beautiful. The clouds were a luminous blanket with the sun reflecting on them. Beautiful as it was, I imagined that it wouldn't even come close to the glory of our Lord at His second coming. What an awesome moment!

Travel Tip by Theresa: Where in the world did I take this photo?!

If you're like me, you come home from a trip with hundreds of photos on your camera. I enjoy making photo books on Shutterfly, but they are admittedly time-consuming, so I often end up working on a book literally a couple of years after my return from the trip. It's difficult to remember where every single photo was taken and cumbersome to carry pen and paper to jot everything down each time that shutter clicks. A lot of new cameras have GPS capabilities for tagging the location of a shot, but if yours doesn't, here are some pointers. 


1. Take photos of signs as you go along. If you're hiking, take a photo of the trailhead sign.Take photos of informational signs so you can use them in captioning your photo album/book. If you're entering a park, snap a shot of the entry sign. You can either crop these images for use as captions or just use them for informational purposes.


2. If you have a smartphone with map capabilities, do a screen shot of the map. Set your camera's time to local time and synchronize it with your smartphone's time. Then you can match up the photos' times and determine the location of the photo. This helps a lot when you're trying to figure out where in the world that photo was taken. 


Now, back to my photo book production....

Travel Tips by Theresa: shaving for ladies

We have so.many.products available to us today. I often have trouble trying to stuff all my toiletries into my travel case. And is shaving cream a liquid or not?!

Here is your solution.

Skip the shaving cream. Hair conditioner works just as well! It softens the hair and makes shaving a breeze.

Travel Tips by Theresa: protecting credit information

When you make a reservation for overseas lodging, it is often done via email to avoid paying international calling rates. Short-term apartment rental companies and small B&Bs generally require a credit card hold.

image courtesy Wikimedia

Send your information over several emails to dodge the information farmers who lurk online. Split your card number into two sections and expiration into another.

e.g.
Email 1:
This is Theresa, who made reservations for your apartment Lotus Blossom  in Rome for the dates April 1-5, 2012. I will be sending you my card information in emails following.

Email 2:
1234 4321

Email 3:
4578 8765

Email 4:
November 2020

It is wise to spell out the month name in any date references to avoid confusion. European countries use the day/month/year format as opposed to our month/day/year format here in the States.

I also avoid contractions and colloquialisms in my correspondence, in case the recipient does not read English well.

Airport Mailers

Following up on my earlier post about treasured items you forgot you had in your pocket....I suggested that you bring a self-addressed stamped envelope for the purpose of mailing from the airport.

I asked this question on the Fodor's forum and received some interesting answers. One user has successfully used an airport service called Airport Mailers. I was really glad to see someone has provided this service. Let's hope they expand to more airports! They are currently in 28.