Europe

Warsaw day 1

 in Deb's Travels / Europe / Food / Poland / Sight-seeing

As I traveled to Warsaw for the first time, I felt like a VIP knowing my host, Michal, would be waiting for me at the airport — holding a white sign with my name on it. As he drove me home, he told me of his girlfriend Joanna (Yanna) and that she was making me a traditional Polish meal of Pierogi (but with berries)l for my arrival. Wow.

My first outing in a new country is always exciting. Even if it’s just walking to a food market. But in this case, being taken around by a life-long resident of Warsaw was particularly nice.

Balearic Islands trip research via Twitter

 in Balearic Islands (Mediterranean Sea) / Deb's Travels / Europe

I’m still in Los Angeles, a break between travels, as I write this. But I’ve been thinking about the places I’d like to head to next. A writer acquaintance living in Minorca, got me thinking about heading there, to the Balearic Islands of which Minorca’s a part. I don’t normally do much research into a place before I go. I like to discover as I go. But this time I’m using  more “social media” and see what kind of relationships I can form before I go anywhere. In this post, I shall share all good or interesting information that I find on Twitter. Why? Because I’m curious as to what can be found using Twitter as a research tool. Using TweetDeck as my Twitter client, I created several columns, each its own hashtag search. One is a search for #Mallorca as it’s the largest island in this group of islands. Mostly there […]

Carry light, give light

 in Africa / Asia / Balkans / Baltics / Central America / England / Europe / Israel / North America / Packing / Traveling with Technology / UK

I think that we who live in cities, be it on any continent in any city, tend to not realize that there ARE places in the world where there is NO electricity and people do not have light — other than that of the sun. And we who live in cities have so much light in the sky at night that we don’t even realize… how very dark the night really is. Those who live in non-electrified places can wake with the sun and go to sleep with the sun — but there are still issues such as: going to the bathroom before bed or in the middle of the night a mother needing to get up in the night to feed an infant a parent needing to tend to a child a person needing to work until dark and then find his/her way home boats needing to cross a lake or ocean or […]

3% international fee on credit card purchases — not!

 in Africa / Area / Asia / Balkans / Baltics / Europe / Israel / North America / Packing / Traveling with Technology

This post is for American travelers who plan to use an American credit card while traveling outside of the United States.

It’s great to be able to travel with a minimum of cash in your pocket but did you know that when you use your credit card outside of the United States, you may incur a 3% fee on top of your actual charge?