Trippy Travel Tips

In packing and getting ready for this trip, I was reminded of a few things that helped me out on my previous trip and I thought I'd share them with you travelers out there:

1. www.ekit.com - of all the travel resources, this was the most useful to me when traveling Europe last year. It's run by Rail Europe.

My family was able to call a free access number and leave me voicemail messages that I could access with a free access number from the Czech Republic/UK/Italy/Taiwan/Japan. It was AWESOME! My dad also e-mailed me and there was a computerized voice that read the e-mail over the phone to me since I wasn't able to get to the local library to access the free internet all the time.

I just found out about their free travel vault. I'm going to keep a copy of my passport and all my important information there. ekit has it set up so you can have your stored documents faxed anywhere with a phone call if you need it. It truly is the ultimate travel resource. Especially if you're hopping all over and don't have an itinerary but still want to check-in every once in awhile.

2. Turkey is actually not the safest place to be right now and I need to be aware of the risk. I'd heard it from friends, but reading the US Consulate's emotionless matter-of-fact descriptions of what happened just last month in many of the places we're scheduled to visit... gave me pause. Check travel warnings before you go anywhere.

3. Pack like you're going on tour. An old roomie who did a lot of touring as an actor taught me how to pack. I'd learned one technique from other former roommates who were flight attendants but the tour packing outshines everything I'd learned. I have so much more room with minimum wrinkles and everything is accessible. No, it's not about rolling or vacuum packing into Ziplocs. It's actually using your suitcase as a shelf and then there's all this extra room to lay things on top. The photo above actually shows 3 pairs of shoes and 12 tops and bottoms along with underwear, socks, plastic bags, sundries, and 3 books, a bunch of gifts and more.

4. Check with my Medical Insurance before I leave to see if I'll be covered overseas. This makes sense, but in my last minute rush to pack and try to get everything done before leaving it almost went out the window.


There you go. Not much, but something, eh? 3 days and counting. 2 days if you don't count the day I leave. Sheesh. I still don't feel ready. Hope to blog while I'm over there but I think I'll be at the mercy of the schedule set up by our hostess so I'm not sure how much internet access I'll get.