Category Archives: Travel

Technology, Travel

Eye-fi cards, and field blogging

This week, I’m going for a short break to Amsterdam, and this should be the ideal opportunity to test a few things. While I was in Rome a few months ago, I had a mild annoyance (and on several holidays prior to that). I was using my proper (not expensive, but better for some tasks than my phone) digital camera. So some photos would be on my phone, but some on my other camera.

What’s wrong with this? Well, I like to blog while I’m away. Given my camera doesn’t have wifi or bluetooth, and my phone doesn’t have any slots for the sort of memory card my camera uses, how do I get the photos off my camera, and onto/through my phone, to upload them? If I had a tablet, I could just take the SD card from one, put into the other, and upload photos. But I don’t. I could take a laptop, but that’s extra weight, something else to lose/get stolen, etc. and my laptop is ancient/slow/rubbish anyway. So before taking a photo, I would have to really think about whether I might want to blog/tweet this later that day, or whether it’ll just go into the abyss of “other photos I took” when I get home. In some cases, I took identical photos on two devices, for this reason.

After a lot of research, and various hacks considered, I plumped for what can only be seen as the sensible option (also the cheapest) – an Eye-fi card. Continue reading Eye-fi cards, and field blogging →

Travel

Rome – Part 4 (Final part, plus weird photos)

Sunday – the last day.

I haven’t slept that well and woke up with quite a dry/sore throat.
If truth be told, I think it’s been heading my way for days. My ears were popping on the plane and refused to pop back right, for the whole time we’ve been here. Not sure if they’re right or not now.

Also, it’s quite smokey. Lots and lots of smokers. Much worse than UK. Breathing in that passive smoke all day can’t be good for you. I’ve even seen officials at tourist attractions stood right outside smoking away, and people cooking in restaurants/cafe, fag in hand. Disgusting.
According to a quick google search, the Italy smoking ban in 2005 lowered the number of smokers from 26% of the population to 24%. It doesn’t appear to be enforced either, really.

I’m also not feeling too great after attempting to tackle that big gristly steak last night. I must learn to stick to my guns with my ‘no red meat’ policy.
If there’s one thing I’d add to Rome, it’s the words “with seasonal vegetables” to their menus. What’s with this ‘couple of salad leaves’ bullshit? I’m not going to pretend I always hit my 5-a-day on at home, but I do a fuckload better than this on fruit and vegetables usually. It’s a surprise the Italians don’t all have either scurvy/rickets, or wind up massively obese. Continue reading Rome – Part 4 (Final part, plus weird photos) →

Travel

Rome – Part 2

Saturday AM

I’ve just overheard some people in our hotel discussing the tourist tax. This isn’t some sort of political term. Rome has an actual tax on tourists, variable depending on how nice a hotel you’re staying in. There is a sign in the lift of our hotel saying we’ll be charged €2 a day, per person, for being here. I think it goes up to €5 a day per person in the expensive hotels. You pay it when you check out, in cash, which certainly doesn’t sound dodgy. At all. Continue reading Rome – Part 2 →

Travel

Rome – Part 1

Thursday

I’m a nervous flyer, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop being impressed by the distance you can travel in the time it takes to watch a film.
This is the first trip where we’ve organised it ourselves and we’ve not gone through a travel agent.
We bought flight + hotel from British Airways (they were cheaper than Easyjet and better flight times), and are organising our own transport before and after the plane lands.
All went fine.
There were some noisy kids on our flight (some sort of school trip from Canada), but they quietened down once we took off, and clapped when the plane landed. Which is nice isn’t it.
There had been no option to choose food for the flight, so I had assumed no food/drink included. But they came round and gave every passenger a wrap (Duck, or vegetarian available), and your choice of drinks – or multiple drinks. Tea and water for my girlfriend, tea for me. Some people appeared to have non-alcoholic cocktails. All included in the price, seemingly.
Also we got free newspapers. I (from The Independent), The Mail, or the Financial Times. Not bad, really.

So – Rome.
Continue reading Rome – Part 1 →

Travel

Corfu – Part 9

What a terrifying ride that was. No, no – I’m not talking about the flight here. The taxi to the airport from our apartment.
The driver stopped, opened the window and asked “Demitroula Apartments?”
This is where we had been staying, and from the fact he had a couple already in the car, my girlfriend and I both assumed he was lost, and looking for the place, for these new people who were arriving. Sadly, not. He was picking us up to take us to the airport.
We’d been told to wait in that spot, by our rep, and were expecting a coach, so a taxi was worse.
He got in, phone in hand, and started a call as he was pulling away. It being a manual, this meant he had to take his one remaining hand off the wheel to change gears. Well what could else could he do? Hang up, and concentrate on his driving?
As he took his hands off the wheel and accelerated, the car would vear off to the right. He’d yank it back, and so on. All the way down an already narrow road, with cars parked on one side.
We joined a dual carriageway, on which he got well over the speed limit (I think it’s about 70mph ish, but there were points when he was hitting 100.)
He finished his call, put the phone back in its charger. And relax.
Then he got it out again, made another call. Continue reading Corfu – Part 9 →

Travel

Corfu – Part 8

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Friday AM

I suppose 1.5 days of cloud/rain isn’t so bad. Could have been worse, couldn’t it?
The lady in the little shop said yesterday that they do really badly need rain.
Odd then, that hardly anyone seems to act to preserve water.
Every tap I’ve encountered so far just chucks water everywhere when you turn it on. Sprays straight, but also out the sides. Every tap in our apartment has the same problem.
I haven’t yet encountered a sink anywhere, with a plug for the plug hole. You just pour it straight down the drain.
I used a public toilet in Corfu Town this week two days running. Both times it had a tap running that I couldn’t get to switch off. Just constantly pouring water down the drain.
The grounds of our apartment has sprinklers dotted all around. There is no evidence of a hosepipe ban in force here. I haven’t seen a water butt anywhere.
Maybe because everyone drinks bottled water (or beer/fizzy drinks), water isn’t valued very highly?

It has now been raining for ages. The pathway outside has turned into a mini stream. Sadly, we’re out of milk. I had a great idea to run to the shop in sandals (broken), shorts, no socks, holding an umbrella.
My word that water was cold. Despite the umbrella.
The winds meant I got absolutely soaked, and some of those puddles were quite deep. Still, now We can have cereal and another cup of tea each. Totally worth it. Continue reading Corfu – Part 8 →

Travel

Corfu – Part 7

Thursday

Well our new neighbours are well and truly in. Annoyingly, they’re prolific smokers. When one isn’t smoking, the other is, like some sort of very unhealthy Olympic relay.
The shared balcony means when they spark up, the resulting smoke then blows back into our apartment.
So every time it’s a bit hot, it’s a case of “I think I’ll open the balcony door..oh..or I’ll close it again”.
Smokers: you’re smelly bastards, the lot of you.
If I went on the balcony and farted every 30 seconds, this wouldn’t be acceptable, would it?
The only saving grace is that they smoke roll-ups, so you get a few minutes of warning between pouch being opened (it’s never actually put away), and lighter being flicked.

I’m hoping today is better than yesterday. Continue reading Corfu – Part 7 →

Travel

Corfu – Part 6

Tuesday evening

Well that was an odd evening meal out. Nice food, but odd experience.
My girlfriend was stood reading the menu outside, and happened to rest her hands around her general stomach area.
The restaurant owner took this to mean that she was pregnant. She isn’t, so she laughed at this, then started privately telling me about how I mustn’t let her have any chocolate or biscuits when we get back to England.
Then it came to ordering drinks. 2 lemonades. “OK – I’ll get you a beer”
I don’t drink beer (or alcohol at all, really), so from when the drinks arrived, and for the rest of the meal, my “pregnant” girlfriend was drinking “my” beer, while I snuck sips of “her” lemonade, to hide her apparently-unwavering alcohol addiction, and make it appear both drinks were going down at the same rate.
Either way the food was nice, staff friendly.
One odd thing to note. People smoked. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a restaurant where people were allowed to smoke. It wasn’t too bad though as it was semi-outdoors (like most restaurants/bars in Corfu). Continue reading Corfu – Part 6 →

Travel

Corfu – Part 5

Monday

Feeling a bit bad that we don’t even know how to say “hello”, “good morning”, or “thank you”, so tried to learn some Greek this morning. It’s hard. I’d assumed there would be a bit of “oh that’s like the German word” or “thats almost the same as English”, but there really isn’t many occasions that seems to be the case.
I’ve forgotten what I learnt already.

It’s harder than Spanish, French or German (of which I know a tiny amount of each), as it doesn’t seem to have the patterns of words all the time.
E.g. Montag, Dienstag (German). Lundi, Mardi (French). Monday, Tuesday (English, obv). Words that are grouped/related that are kinda mostly similarly patterned/have same starts or ends (yes I know there are exceptions like Dimanche).
In Greek though, 4am and 5am are very different. Same with 7pm and 8pm. Maybe they differentiate between “very-early” morning and “early” morning, and they’ve finally decided at what point “afternoon” definitely becomes “evening”. Continue reading Corfu – Part 5 →