All-in-One Travel Power

Take a break

1. In terms of accommodation, youth hostels are a good plan. Especially if you have an International Student Card tagged onto your NUS card (at only £1 extra it becomes invaluable if you travel a lot). Stay with friends abroad if you’re lucky enough to have them. Otherwise, in Europe there are a few grades of hotel in between hostel and 5-star. A few offer cheap rooms without ensuites alongside more expensive ones. Shop around: check on lastminute.com and other travel sites, because they usually do have the best deals.

2. Buy a DK guide. They’ve got absolutely everything in them, from local customs to local English-style pubs. Not to mention weird 3D maps of the city that make it easier to find your way around. For my mother, they have walking tours. For me, they have a rating system for the places to visit that makes it easy to plan everything.

3. It’s probably not the best idea to carry around your nicest, slouchy, unzipped handbag. It may look gorgeous, but you can’t just bat your eyelashes and hope the security will let you through on style alone when you don’t have a passport or any money on the way back home. (And don’t keep things in your back pockets, guys.) A bumbag, whilst a fashion no-no can be a good idea. If you can get one of those discreet ones that go under your top, super. If you can’t, make somewhere else be the fashion victim.

Source: The Yorker

» All-in-One Travel Power Plug Adapter for US, UK, EU, AU Adapters ...

First off, this is NOT a voltage converter so if you have 110V appliances, make sure the power plugs for those are universal (i. e. , accept 110-240V) before using them with this overseas. Also, the pics on Amazon sort of make it seem like you get three adapters, but they are really just different modes of the same adapter -you only get one adapter. And unlike other adapters you don’t have to carry around all these other plug extensions (i. e. , one for each plug type). You can then flip or press the other plugs back into the device so that only one plug type is sticking out (just like in the pictures). This is very important since many outlets in Europe are inset, and without that extra length on the plug, the adapter would not reach the outlet. I used this in Europe with no problems – as you can see, the Europe plug juts out more than the other modes....

Read more...