Sunday, July 8, 2012

Additional preparation

I'm taking care of some stuff that needs to be done before we leave on Thursday. First off, I realized I should probably find out about power plugs in France. As I suspected, I need an adapter, but fortunately I already had one in a kit of adapters I had from a previous trip to the UK. I tossed that in my laptop bag along with a 3 plug power thingy that should allow us to plug in a couple laptops and a phone at the same time.

I also dropped $8.00 to unlock my son's old phone cell phone. As much as I'd like to unlock my iPhone and be able to get a SIM over there for it, I was not prepared to spend the $150 to do it. We'll take my son's old phone with us and pick up a prepaid SIM to pop in when we get to Paris. That way, we'll be able to make a few calls and send a few texts if need be.

I also made sure that my wife and I were both set up with Skype on our mobile phones, as is Nathan. This will be our primary way of calling home as all of our hotel rooms have wifi.

I don't want to have any issues in France with my credit card, so I sent them a note over the Internet telling them of my travel plans. Hopefully, that will ensure that we have uninterrupted access to our cash while in Europe.

I also figured that I better pick up a map.  In the US, I wouldn't need to do this, but in France, especially without a live iPhone, and travelling on lots of little roads all over the south of France, I figured it would be a good idea to have a quality map. I picked of a Michelin map of France (#721) at Barnes and Noble just in case. I suspect we will get some use out of it.

Finally, I know that many people in France speak English, but many don't.  I don't want to be totally screwed when having to try to communicate with the second group, so I picked up a Berlitz Just Enough French Phrasebook while I was at B&N. Hopefully this won't get too much use, but better safe than sorry.

3 comments:

  1. Bill, Did not know you had moved to Phoenix; my nephew begins an internet and webcam sports job in Gilbert, Arizona, next week..Enjoy the French wine, beer, and spirits and say "NO" to the cyclist cocktails, HGH, PED's, and steroids!! Wave the MizzouNation flaf with pride and have fun!! Alan H. Deright.

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