Good tips, especially re snacks. They are vital for adults and grownups We chose not to turn on our roaming when we were overseas and it made for some fun times, (eg getting the wrong train in Portugal and then being completely lost) but we didn’t have any children in tow so that made it easier. Every morning we would map out a route to our destination using the hotel wifi, and then just take it from there. One tip I read regarding using your phone overseas is to leave it on airplane mode but turn on wifi and Bluetooth. This worked a treat for me and was easier than turning things on and off all the time.
So many good tips, Hoang, even for those of us whose kids have long fled the nest! Checking passports’ expiration date is a big one (some countries demand a 6-month window too!), as is the importance of not booking trains too close together, bringing the right cables and alerting your credit card company that you’re traveling (we’ve found some care, others don’t). I always bring a little currency of the country we’re visiting, though these days, with credit and debit cards generally accepted, cash is less necessary, but you never know when you might need it. Wi-Fi roaming is essential, though we discovered that it often didn’t work in areas where we were traveling, and the bars were so low that having a good old-fashioned paper map could be invaluable. That was especially true on our summer road trip when on certain unpopulated stretches of highway (in Wyoming, for example) even the GPS didn’t function. On a train in Europe, of course, that’s unlikely to happen. The most frustrating issue there was our phones went dead from overuse. A portable charger or backup phone is helpful in that case.
Good tips, especially re snacks. They are vital for adults and grownups We chose not to turn on our roaming when we were overseas and it made for some fun times, (eg getting the wrong train in Portugal and then being completely lost) but we didn’t have any children in tow so that made it easier. Every morning we would map out a route to our destination using the hotel wifi, and then just take it from there. One tip I read regarding using your phone overseas is to leave it on airplane mode but turn on wifi and Bluetooth. This worked a treat for me and was easier than turning things on and off all the time.
So many good tips, Hoang, even for those of us whose kids have long fled the nest! Checking passports’ expiration date is a big one (some countries demand a 6-month window too!), as is the importance of not booking trains too close together, bringing the right cables and alerting your credit card company that you’re traveling (we’ve found some care, others don’t). I always bring a little currency of the country we’re visiting, though these days, with credit and debit cards generally accepted, cash is less necessary, but you never know when you might need it. Wi-Fi roaming is essential, though we discovered that it often didn’t work in areas where we were traveling, and the bars were so low that having a good old-fashioned paper map could be invaluable. That was especially true on our summer road trip when on certain unpopulated stretches of highway (in Wyoming, for example) even the GPS didn’t function. On a train in Europe, of course, that’s unlikely to happen. The most frustrating issue there was our phones went dead from overuse. A portable charger or backup phone is helpful in that case.