The Joke Is On Me: ATM Cards

Last time I was an idiot, it was travelers checks that almost did me in. As I grew up and got smarter and more with the times, I stopped carrying traveler's checks and almost exclusively used my ATM card. A lot of countries take credit cards now, but there are still some countries where having cash is a necessary thing and sometime the rate is better through the ATM (unless you get charged ATM fees, but we can talk about how to avoid that in a different post). So I always take an ATM card and a credit card with me when I travel, no matter where I am going. 

Gratuitous Slovenian mountain scene. 

Last year I went to Slovenia. The plan was that I was going to be in a city probably four or five of the fourteen days and would be hiking a point to point hike for the other ten days. This meant that I would not be able to leave things somewhere to pick up; I would have to carry everything I needed for the entire fourteen days on my back. Needless to say, I wanted to pack light. So I carried a lot of items that I could use for both trail and city and I pared down a lot of things, like my toiletries and my wallet, so that I would not be carrying extra stuff. I got rid of my work badge, my extra credit card, my AAA card. I brought bar shampoo. I brought my multi adapter charging station. I was ready and I was excited and I took my pack to work the day before so I could ride my bike to work the next day without the huge pack on my back. I was prepared! 

Then I left the office, got on the BART to the airport, and realized that in paring down my wallet, I had taken out my ATM card. I had only wanted to carry one credit card and I do not think I screwed my head on all the way when I visualized what this meant. I always use a list but this time it was a bit of a hybrid backpacking/city exploring and I did not think about both of them fully. 

You may think that I was headed to Europe, which is not a third world country; why would I even need cash? Well, mon ami, I was going to be backpacking in the remote Alps and there are huts where you can sleep but in my prior experience those huts only took cash. Many of them had no online reservation system, so I could not even reserve them in advance with my credit card. You may think that I could just get out cash with my credit card. That would be true if I knew my pin, which I don't because I have never ever used my credit card to get cash. 

So I sat on the BART as it hurtled towards SFO, wondering how I was going to solve this issue. I did not have time to go home and get the card; I had my emergency $20 with me, but that would not get me far. I knew there were solutions, but what would be the best one, given I was going to be on a plane for twelve hours and then out of the country soon!? I noodled for a minute while sweating slightly due to my own stupidity. 

The solution ended up being the following: luckily (or stupidly, you choose) I had taken a photo of my ATM card, which I kept in a travel folder on the cloud. I would like to say that it was a protected folder, but it wasn't. However, I did use this photo to get the number off of the card, which I then typed into Google wallet. Then, when I got to the airport, I used the tap to pay from Google wallet to get money out of the ATM! Can you believe the technology today? Sometimes when I am wishing that we did not spend so much time on our phones, I think of hacks like this and am so glad that our phones are so dang handy. 

But wait, the story is not to the happily ever after stage yet! I arrived in Amsterdam and went straight to the money exchange counter. A slight side note, I like to cram as much as I can into my vacations, so had booked a flight to Vienna with a layover in Amsterdam. Once arriving in Vienna, I would need to get on the first train out to get to my destination. However, my flight into Vienna was kind of late at night and if I missed the first train, I only had one other option, so I probably would not have time to get money out there. I love to live on the edge, people. 

I work in finance so I know what the exchange rates are and let me tell you, the kiosk at the airport in Amsterdam was NOT a good rate. Of course, what options did I have, given I would be basically going straight up into the mountains as soon as I got to Slovenia. So I got completely ripped off and my dollars barely got me enough to pay for my estimated cost for ten nights at a hut in the mountains. So I knew I was going to have to be frugal. 

Fast forward to day ten of my fourteen day vacation and you will find me at the end of my hike, ensconced in a small guesthouse in the hills near lake Bohinj, one that I booked using Booking.com. Little did I realize, since I booked it from the one spot that had cell service on my way down the mountain, that I did NOT read the fine print and this place...you guessed it...only took cash! Luckily, some of the mountain huts had taken credit cards and I had taken advantage of that to use my card instead, just in case I needed the cash later. However, I had used most of my cash and I literally had to pay the last lady with all of my pocket change, leaving me with about 2 euros to my name. I hoped that when I was in Lublijana I would not need ANY cash or I would be screwed! 

Literally the last of my cash!

Luckily I did not need cash, but this experience made me realize that we have become way too dependent on our phones, upon being able to get things easily at any time and to having the convenience of tap to pay pretty much everywhere in the US (even the street vendors sometimes have a credit card pay option!) As I may have mentioned, my trail name is Prepper because I am generally overprepared, but even I have my moments. So, bottom line is, make a list and always have an emergency stash of cash!! 

Do you use cash when you travel? If so, what is your procedure for getting it? If not, have you ever run into any issues due to not having cash? 

Best of 2021: Travel

In 2021 I took more time to do things that were closer to home, as well as doing a few short trips within the US. I also finally bit the bullet late in the year once COVID started dying down and things started opening up (of course, that did not last long!) and I went on one international trip (my first in over two years!!) Here were a few of my favorites, in no particular order. 

Oregon: I went to Sisters and Portland where I did some hiking, running, eating and snowshoeing! 

Deschutes National Forest - Snowshoeing

Deschutes River (near Bend)

The High Sierras: Multi-day backpacking trips. 

(1) Mammoth + The North South Lake Loop: I took this with JG at the beginning of July like we usually do. This year was not too snowy, so were were able to cross over to the Eastern Sierras and get pretty high without encountering snow (we have not always been so lucky). In fact, JG got a bit of sunstroke or the like, as it was blisteringly hot! My favorite parts were the off trail sections. Although difficult, the views are amazing. Two of my favorites were the Darwin Bench and the hike up to Puppet Lake. Of course, Evolution Basin was beautiful too, if you want to stay on trail. 

Minaret Lakes

Cross Country - somewhere near the Palisades

(2) The SEKI Loop: This was planned with four other people, but two of them left the trail early, so it just ended up being JG, PEB and me. We all hike at different speeds, so we spent the days hiking on our own mostly, checking in from time to time and then making camp together at night. Much of it was on the JMT, but it had a nice variety of wooded vs. high granite vs. creek paths vs. long vistas. My favorite part of this trip was jumping in every lake or creek I could find along the way. 

Palisade Lake - yes, I swam here.

Other Sierras: 

(1) Desolation Wilderness: Our first trip was in winter, where we did a bit of snowshoeing and camping on (wet) snow. The second was done as a weekend trip; unfortunately it was right when the Dixie and Tamarack fires started, so we were glad to get out on Sunday and check the status of both of them. However, we had a good time exploring a couple of lakes we had not seen before, as well as camping at one we had gone to last year and had wanted to spend more time at. 

Winter at Echo Lake

Leland Lakes

(2) Emigrant Wilderness: Another great trip, this time to show my brother some of the cool stuff I had found with JG in years past. Once again, we stayed in a place I had not been to, and it was beautiful (see photo below)! 

Camping at Rososco Lake

My brother's first major cross country experience (can you see him in this photo?)

(3) Yosemite: After my exam, I hightailed it to the Sierras and was one of the first to get a permit after the roads opened! I really enjoyed the Grand Canyon of the Sierras (Tuolumne River) as well as many of the sweeping views I found both while hiking and in my camp spots. 

Tuolumne River

Colorado: I decided that instead of doing an international trip in September like I usually would, I would do something fun and domestic, so I went and hiked the Colorado Trail from Durango to Twin Lakes. My friend KH joined me for the latter half, and it was fun to see some new scenery and to spend time with her. My favorite part was the San Juans. 

San Juans

High point of the trail + my worst day on the trail (due to weather) 

Europe: At the very end of the year I decided to sneak out of the country for a few days and finally got to see Prague, a city I had been wanting to go to for years. There were still a lot of COVID related restrictions, but it did not put a damper on my experience at all. 

The Palace - South Tower

The Vltava

Well there you have it. This year was a lot more travel than last year, that is for sure. I hope next year I will finally get to take the trip back to Nepal to finish Everest Base Camp trek (it has been planned for the last two years) but in the meantime, I am having fun improvising! 

Where did you travel this year? If you did not travel, what fun things did you do close to home? 

Europe 2014: Munich

Last year, as I have mentioned, I rewarded myself with a trip to Europe after passing my exams for work. I never really got around to posting anything, as that time in my life was quite busy! The trip was very last minute, but all I knew was that I wanted to do something active. I narrowed it down to Argentina, Peru and the Alps, but didn't make my final decision until about three weeks before I left, which is totally not like me. I finally decided on an Alpine vacation, since September was the perfect time of year for hiking in the Alps.

I started off my trip with a pit stop in New York for Labor Day to visit with my parents. After having a great time wandering, running and eating with them, I headed East once again, this time to Frankfurt, Germany. Why Frankfurt, you ask? Well, it's a long story, but basically it was much cheaper to fly to Frankfurt and take the train to wherever I wanted than to fly to where I wanted. So, Frankfurt it was! I took the red eye, which put me into Frankfurt in the morning. I immediately found a train to Munich, and had a very enjoyable train ride southward. I arrived in Munich in the late morning and although I was quite tired, I had a quick coffee, grabbed my camera, and headed out to see what I could find.

Glockenspiel

The best part about Munich was all of the fresh fruit stands, beer stands/halls, the bikes and the bakeries. Don't get me wrong, there were a ton of awesome buildings and of course there was the Glockenspiel, but I really enjoyed the laid back biking atmosphere and the smell of fresh bread. I got my fill of it all, literally and figuratively, and then headed to the Lidl, which is the European grocery store, for some supplies for the next day. Perhaps my kilo to pound conversion is off a bit, but it seemed like the fruit there was really cheap! 

Hofbrauhaus

Fruit Stand

I went to bed around 8 pm and woke up the next day around 7 am very refreshed. Take that, jet lag! The first thing I did was to take a nice run around town. The funny thing was that it seemed like there were no other runners out. I saw two other people the entire time I was running, which was about 6 miles. I ran up to the English Gardens (Englischer Garten) which is a huge park. The coolest part of that was that there were surfers in the waterways! I guess that is one way to get your surf on when you don't have an ocean nearby!

Picnic Lunch

English Garden Surfers

After my run, I had a nice breakfast of bread, cheese, cold cuts and fruit and I boarded a train headed south towards Austria.

Have you ever been to Germany? What is the price of an apple per pound where you live? Do you eat out when traveling or do you picnic?

If it is Called Monte, it Must be a Mountain

Okay so the verdict is in...Montenegro is the place to be! It is beautiful. It is tiny, with only about 700,000 people. It has ocean, mountains and beautiful old cities. We had a great time in Budva, which is a beach town, although we had no map and had a heck of a time finding a place to stay. The norm in Montenegro is to stay at someone's house, in their extra room. We got lucky the first time and the guy had an entire apartment with a separate entrance, its own kitchen, bathroom and patio. It was awesome. We got some wine and cheese from the store and had a picnic on the patio. The next day we went on a tour, which is not my favorite thing, but we did get to go on a boat and to see my favorite town, the walled city of Kotor, which is very midevil and has walls going all the way up the mountains to protect the city.

Next we headed to the mountains and took an all day hike up the third tallest mountain, which was very cool, but very tiring. It was only about 7000 feet (2300 m) maybe, but man was it steep, with lots of scree and snow so sometimes you had to bushwhack (actually to scree whack is more like it ) in order to get up the mountain. But we made it and the view was amazing. You could see for miles, rolling farmland and steep mountains together with little farm houses with steep alpine roofs. The walk back was the worst; downhill always gets me. And then we had to walk along the road to get back to our house and I think that in itself was about 4 miles! Or it seemed like it. We ended up hiking for about 10 hours in total. We got back to town and ate a horse and a half and passed out. Whew, real excercise makes me tired!

So then it was off to Croatia where we are now. Croatia is just as beautiful as Montenegro, but its about 3 times the price. So, we get on an over night ferry tonight and are headed to Ancona Italy. From there we will go to Bologna (has a first name...its Oscar!) and then Venice. More on all of that later. My posts are going to be quite sporadic, as the internet here is 6 dollars an hour and the internet cafes are surprisingly SCARCE. Booo..

I hope all is well back home. Happy Fathers Day to all the Dads out there!

My Mom Asked For a Map

So here it is....

Red = Where we are
Green = Last route
Blue = Where we plan to go

What's That You Say?

I only have one thing to say about Albania so far (arrived yesterday evening). Albanians are NICE. Waaaayyy nice. So maybe you are wondering, "aren't Spanish people nice? And what about the Greeks?" Yes, they are also nice, but I decided that the reason I like the Albanians, and maybe it is ironic, is that they don't speak English. Not really.

Yesterday we took a bus from Athens to Saranda, Albania, which is a cute little town sandwiched between the mountains and the sea. It is only about an hour from the Greece border and has had much strife. As little as 13  years ago, Albania was still having strife between anarchists and the government (see history of Albania here). However, now they are peaceful and the tourist business has supposedly picked up, although we have not seen more than a handful of other tourists yet.

On the bus, there were only about 6 other people. The whole time, even though we didn't speak the same language, they made sure we made it back onto the bus, bought us oranges and even patted me on the back as I finally got off the bus. They were very helpful and super nice!

Then we were looking for our hostel and a man came up to us and said, "I think I can help you" and since usually taxi drivers and everyone under the sun says they can "help" us when really they want to rip us off, we ignored the guy. Then he said my name. Turns out he was the guy from the hostel, waiting on the street to make sure we found it okay. Then when I asked him later where we could have dinner, he said, "I will take you there. What time would you like to go?" Its like a personal shopper! Anyway, this guy, "Tom" was/is great! He took us to dinner (we invited him to stay and it was very informative), told us exactly where to catch each bus and more!

Today we went to Gjirokaster, which is an old city, all made of rocks with slate roofs, and went to look at the Castle there. It was beautiful, very Gothic with many arches and stones and cobblestoned streets. The town was cute, with tiny cobbled streets, little shops and SO MANY MERCEDES! I don't know what it is about this country, but I think it is where Mercedes go to retire. There are a lot of new ones too, but there are TONS of 1970s 1980s Mercedes. They must have got like a buy one, get 100 free deal at some point. I love it!

Tomorrow we go to to Butrint, which is a UNESCO site with ruins from the Ottoman empire. More on that later.

It's All Greek To Me

We arrived in Athens and nobody accosted us at the door to the airport. In fact, it was all very civilized. We took the metro into the city and walked to our hotel without a hitch. We had a great time exploring the Parthenon and surrounding Acropolis area, then had a nice dinner of Gyros (I finally figured it out -- it IS pronounced "Euro", which is funny as we had 2 Euro Gyros) and wandered around the Syntagma Square area, which is where they do the changing of the guards. As we were leaving the square, a bunch of cops shut down the streets and a bevy of motorcycle cops came down it. We were not sure what was happening, but in the light of recent events (strikes and violence a couple of weeks ago) we got the hell out of there, after taking a couple of pictures, of course.

The next day we went to the beach and observed the customs of the Greeks. Actually, it is mostly older ladies. Here is the drill. Get to the beach. Take off clothes, put on bathing suit. Yup, I saw plenty of old lady boobs that day. Put on colored hat (note: each lady has different colored hat). Get right into the water. Make a circle with whichever friends are already there. Chat for a while, probably talk about your horrible husband and your wonderful grand kids (I couldn't understand them, but I am sure it is the same everywhere).  One lady would leave, after changing back into her regular clothes, and others would take her place, with a different colored hat. They never get their hair wet. It was great. They must do this every day. The funniest part is, the next day we went to a totally different beach, about 2 hours from that one, and the ladies were there too!

The next day we went to see the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion where apparently Aegeus, king of Athens, jumped to his death, thereby giving the sea the name The Aegean. The temple is very neat; it is surrounded on three sides by water and sits up on a high cliff. It was surprisingly uncrowded as well, which is not what I can say for the Parthenon. It still amazes me how they built these things (this was built around 700 BC). They are beautiful, all made of marble and columns and supposedly mathematically correct -- the columns go from wide at the bottom to narrow at the top so if you are looking straight at it, they look like they are all the same width. Pretty neat.

Oh and don't forget about the food! Great olive oil and tomato salads and tzatziki and hummus and souvlaki. Yum.

Tapas and Futbol

When we planned our trip, we made a tiny mistake.... Mr L loves soccer. The original plan, like I have mentioned, was to go to the World Cup in South Africa. Once we realized it would be too expensive and a pain to get around during, we decided to do the next best thing, which was to be in Portugal during the Portugal v. Brazil game. Which we are still planning on doing. However, when we booked the first couple of flights, we planned to go into Madrid on the 19th, then fly to Egypt on the 21st. What we didn't know then was that the UAEFA finals were IN MADRID on the 22nd. It would have been fun to be there during the game, however, we were there the couple of days prior and that city was HOPPING!! In fact, our hotel that we stayed at was the headquarters for all the activities, reporters etc that were there for the game. Oh well.

We were pretty tired when we arrived at 10 am, but were determined to stay up all day so we would get into the rhythm of being in this time zone (Madrid is 9 hours ahead of California). We did alright...but it is hard when it is hot and you have a beer and some food. The streets were buzzing with people and we just sat in the shade in a plaza in the middle of the city and ate peanuts and had a coffee, in the true nature of the locals. In fact, my Spanish picked itself up off the ground and presented itself fairly nicely once it brushed off the rust a little.  I made it to about 9 pm, then passed out.

We made a little plan regarding lodging which I like so far, but I have to say, I have been royally spoiled! I usually stay in hostels the whole time, share a bathroom and can't really spread out or really dig into my backpack without making a total mess. BUT. Since we work away from home all the time normally, and stay in hotels, we have accumulated some hotel points. Our plan is to use them for Europe, where the hostels are about 30 dollars each per person. Once we get to Africa, they will be more along the lines of 5 dollars per person (or less sometimes!) so then it will be no problem. Otherwise we will be out of money in a month!

So, in Madrid we were in the Westin and our room was AMAZING!!! A junior suite in a 400 year old building with a sitting area and FREE FRUIT (okay I was pretty excited about the free fruit). Oh and did I mention free bottled water? Ha. We saved about 3 dollars by staying here! Anyway, it was a beautiful hotel and it was kind of nice to "ease" into the traveling experience instead of jumping right from niceties to dirty shared bathrooms. Don't get me wrong, I actually LIKE staying in hostels -- you meet a lot of great people who give you great travel tips for the next destination and oftentimes you end up traveling with them as well. But man it is nice to be able to take a long hot shower and then walk around naked in your air conditioned room. Okay, maybe that was too much information. Suffice to say, the Westin Palace Hotel Madrid ROCKS. Here's the crown molding. Made out of plaster!

Enough about the hotel...ON with the TAPAS! I love tapas. Little plates of heaven! My favorite is these little pickled (I think they are...) sardines. Oh...I have a picture. Its not the best picture, but you have to see these so you know what I am talking about. If you ever, ever go to Spain, make sure to get THESE!!!

Okay so basically right after I ate that plate of fish, we ran to the airport to catch our flight to Cairo... I am very excited about the pyramids, although a bit wary of the people trying to take advantage of me. We shall see. Wish me luck!