Be Prepared.

Save the date - Strike Action. 

The Belgians are striking. Apparently they love Monday strikes because they are having them for the next three Mondays.

Tomorrow's strike will impact rail routes going to Germany. If you have a meeting in Hamburg, I highly recommend rescheduling. If you are planning to get to London, you are golden. If you want to get to the airport, I suggest booking a car service or cab. Nothing like getting all sweaty walking to the station to find out that the trains are also out of service and then having to fight someone for a cab.

Strikes can take a crap on your travel plans.

The next two strikes are predicted to be more severe. Eurostar services are cancelled, as are local and international services and the airport transportation will be shut down.  If you are planning on leaving on Brussels on the 15th, think again.

I appreciate getting the notice of these strikes.  The Italian railways announce strikes months ahead of time.  I feel like each strike needs a save the date card sent out with the information because you are likely to forget it. I recommend special ordering fridge magnets striking workers of the world for each action or in the case of the Belgians a set of three. They are really cute and handy.

Joking aside, I understand the need to strike and the consideration by those striking to allow others to make alternate arrangements, but does this lessen the impact of your strike?

What if you had a strike action that closed the airport and no one came?

Not always. Be prepared. Carry a good book, your charger, know your rights and always use the bathroom before you board your flight.  

On that note, always check with your transportation carrier ahead of time for strikes, flight cancellations, ticket cancellations (me,twice in this trip) and be a savvy traveler. No one is going to do you favors, even if you are super zirconium status. Your concierge may have taken the weekend off and you may be SOL.

Happy Trails my friends.

Backing up is hard to do - not

At the Quai aux briques, it is all about the Fish. 

Hello from the land of the waffle.

I was going to wax poetically about my feelings about Christmas markets, but I'll spare you right now.

I take a lot of pictures, some of them are awesome even without Instagram filters, some of them not so much, but I get to make that decision after I look at my pictures on a screen that is bigger than phone. That requires actually getting my photos from off my phone and somewhere secure.

I have a few hard drives that have thousands of photo and music backups, but to be honest, I never use them any more. I do check them on occasion and they seem stable. I do worry about the discs failing as they are getting old. I've experienced the heartbreak of losing physical SD cards and while I can't ever recover those pictures, they memories of the places are still so vivid in my mind.

Backing up these days is not hard to do.

My iPhone photos get backed up to my hard drive, but that isn't fail safe.  Laptops get stolen, hard disks crash and photos get deleted.  I still love Flickr, but I have all but abandoned it because the interface can be clunky.  I never took to other photo sharing sites, other that Instagram.  I love the fact that Instagram integrates with other apps as well.

I'm using Dropbox/Carousel now to upload my camera uploads automatically when I'm connected to wifi.  You can love or hate Dropbox or the cloud,  but now I have the peace of mind that my photos are getting uploaded while I'm traveling.

There are a million places you can store your photos - Evernote, Flickr, Dropbox, Smugmug, Google Drive - some cost and some are free. The important thing is to back them up somewhere. It's not hard and having photos sit on your phone or on a memory card moldering a drawer is just ridiculous these days. View them, share them, critique them and your photography will improve and you'll get to relive the awesome things you've seen on your travels.

What exactly are you waiting for?