Sep 19th, 2008
Day 1 — Milan
We arrived safely in Milan this morning around 10am after two long flights and an interminable bus ride. Fortunately we had no issues at the airport, which serm to be rare these days.
After dropping off our bags at our hotel we headed out to lunch at a place around the corner. The food was fine but not remarkable.
We then headed to the duomo where we had our first gelato of the trip (that didn’t take to long, did it). I had a cafe and hazelnut cone and Irens had cafe and pistachio. The cafe was the most intensley coffee flavored gelato I’ve ever had. Delicious.
By this then it was time for our appointment to see the Last Supper.
Now we are resting in our hotel room. We’ll probably head out a bit later to take in the sights, but will most likely make an early night of it.
Tomorrow we’ll go to the duomo and then take the noon train to the lake district. That’s all for now.
Posted in Italy, Journal Entry | No Comments
Sep 12th, 2008
The Final Countdown
6 days and counting until we leave for Italy. Plans are made, hotels are booked and all that remains to be done is the packing. We are very excited.
I’ll hopefully be posting from the road, so check back often to see where we are and read about our trip.
Posted in Italy, Travel Planning | No Comments
Sep 5th, 2008
iPhone: Best Travel Accessory Ever — Part 2
In the last post I covered all of the apps that come pre-installed. This time I’ll be covering applications that I downloaded from the App Store. These range in price from free to $9.99.
PageOnce
Cost: Free. I can keep track of all my bank accounts with one glance so I will know when I start to run out of money.
iXpenseit
Cost: $4.99. Allows me to keep track of my day to day spending. I can set up different categories such as lodging, transportation and food. And then I can see reports on how much we’ve spent so far.
Currency
Cost: Free. Keeps me up-to-date on the current exchange rate.
Lonely Planet Italian Phrase Book
Cost: $9.99. The usefulness of this one should be painfully obvious. The bonus is it not only shows you what the phrase is, it speaks it aloud for you so you can here the proper pronunciation.
FileMagnet
Cost: $4.99. Allows me to upload PDFs and other files to my iPhone. I can keep handy maps to the various Rick Steves’ walking tours, hotel reservation confirmations, and train schedules.
I know there are a lot of reports out there right now about people experiencing problems with their iPhones, but I haven’t had any of these issues. Mine works perfectly.
Posted in Travel Tools | No Comments
Aug 6th, 2008
iPhone: Best Travel Accesory Ever — Part 1
Is the iPhone the greatest travel accessory ever? I’m pretty convinced it is thanks to the iTunes App Store. There is an application to cover just about all your travel logistic needs. Here are the ones I think will be particularly helpful and how I plan to use them both before and during our trip to Italy.
I’ll start with the built in applications and in another post I’ll cover ones I’ve gotten from the App Store (both free and purchased).
Maps
I plug in the address of our hotels and bookmark them for later referal, then I take a screen shot of the maps and organize them into their own photo album (to take a screen shot hold down the home button and then press the power button). When I need to see where we’re staying I can call up the Photos application and voila! Now if only I could access my customized Google Maps and view all of my bookmarked locations at once it would truly be perfect.
Contacts
In Contacts I’ve entered all of the phone numbers and addresses of the hotels where we’ll be staying and organized them into a separate group. I’ve done the same thing with emergency contact numbers, like credit cards, banks and our pet sitters.
Calendar
In Calendar, I’ve entered our itenerary including flight and train information, and which hotels we’re staying in on which days. Plus any reservations we have for tourist attractions (like the Last Supper in Milan, and the Uffizi and Acadamy in Florence).
Safari and Mail
The usefulness of these will depend on the prevalence of free WiFi, but lots of hotels include that so I should be able to check email, and post to the blog on a fairly regular basis without having to hunt down and pay for an internet cafe.
iPod
This one is really self explanatory. But I will say I don’t know how anyone survived a transatlantic flight before iPods existed.
That’s all for now, check back later for part 2.
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Aug 3rd, 2008
aTravelogue 3.0
Welcome to the brand new redesign of aTravelogue.com. This website has lain fallow for a while now and for that, I apologize. But now with a fresh new design and a trip to Italy approaching very soon, I hope to be posting here a bit more frequently.
You’ll notice that this site is far from complete. I’m hoping to be putting up more of the old information along with new stuff in the next few weeks.
In the meantime, let me know what you think of the redesign (and if anything isn’t working like it should.
Posted in Maintenance | No Comments
