Ricky Martin’s Blog

As Many North American’s it can be hard to travel and not bring along your cell phone, or Mobile phone, regardless of what you call it most people have become attached to their cell phones and it is a center for all their communication needs.

And as a result if you bring it with you anywhere outside of your home country it may end of being very expensive to use it. We have all heard the stories of the poor tourist who brought along his/her phone only to find out when they got home they had a huge bill with roaming charges and long distance fees, that sometimes can easily get into the hundreds and/or thousands of  dollars if you are not careful.

• Now the first thing you need to do is get a GSM phone that has at least 3 bands but preferably 4 bands that would be labeled as a “world phone”, this is key as most of the rest of the world works with the GSM standard and only now is North America starting to move over more to it. In Canada GSM providers would be mainly Rogers, Fido, and Telus, Bell is starting to switch over and there are some other local carriers, and in the US it is mainly AT&T and T-Mobile that offer you GSM.
• The next thing is to get it unlocked, depending on your phone and carrier you can either do this for free or very cheap, but depending on the Brand and Model some can’t be unlocked. It also depends on what you will be doing with your phone, if your just making calls, you don’t need anything fancy, but if you are a die hard techie with a smart phone things can get more difficult. \
• Now This is the most important thing, unless you absolutely need a number active before you arrive in your destination, Buy your SIM Card when you get there, usually you can find a shop in the airport as soon as you walk out or they might even have a vending machine, if not most providers have shops in most towns and in Europe many of the grocery stores even have their own brand of pay as you go SIM cards. And Whatever you do don’t buy the one’s offered in the travel Magazines or on the plane’s duty free in flight catalog, usually they are overpriced and bad service quality.

From my experience usually you can get the SIM card for free when you purchase airtime at the same time from the provider in the country your visiting, otherwise you can get it very cheap. the alternative is you can usually find a package on e-bay where you can get a SIM card in advance sometimes with airtime but usually without, you still need to call to set up an account once you are in the destination country. So save yourself the time, money and hassle as if you buy it once you arrive you still have to provide some information but usually minimal and they usually charge you on e-bay for a card you could get for free.

I have done this myself in Italy, UK, as well as Canada and the USA, and works like a charm every time.

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As I mentioned many times one of the things we (my wife and I) enjoy is traveling. So this is a little late going up but our latest trip was to San Francisco, this was our first trip to the city. we had been to San Diego which is a little further south in California but never to San Francisco. the trip came at a great time as the weather in Montreal has been cold and snowy for a good part of the winter, and this being our first Canadian winter back since being in the UK and Arizona we were looking forward to a break from sub-zero temperatures.

we had a late flight out of Montreal into San Francisco with a connection in Toronto with Air Canada. the flight was surprisingly full considering it was a Friday afternoon/evening Flight.

We arrived into San Francisco around 10:30 PM local time, by the time we got our bags and got to the hotel it was almost 11:30PM. We checked in with the family to let them know we arrived safe and sound and then we decided we better get to bed.

The hotel I found from hotels.com as it was one of the cheapest in the area and offered a kitchenette which we like as it gives us options instead of having to eat out for every meal. here are some pictures from the hotel room to give you an idea what it looks like.

As you can see nicely laid out place, my only complaint was you hear a lot of noise from the street below especially if you have the windows open, which we did as at night it was a little warm, and there is no A/C but realistically we didn’t mind as we were getting away from the winter back in Montreal. Other than that it is convenient we walked several times down to the pier from the hotel, navigating the steep streets but it was a great exercise.

We also took advantage of the CityPass booklet which we found for the price was a great value. it gave you Access to 5 attractions in the city as well as a 7 day MUNI and Cable Car Pass, the Aquarium of the Bay, a one hour cruise with Blue and Gold Cruise of the bay, The California Academy of Sciences, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Exploratorium or the De Young Museum which is what we chose as they had the king Tut exhibit there.

We tried to do about one attraction per day, we did the Aquarium and the cruise on the same day as it was raining when we got to the pier so we did the aquarium which was very nice.

As you can see from The shots above it is a great opportunity to see some interesting animals up close. then when we finished the weather was a bit nicer and the sun was starting to come out so we decided to take a chance and do the cruise.

With the cruise you get right up close to Alcatraz, I found for me that was good enough, I couldn’t justify paying almost $40 per person to do a tour of Alcatraz.

It also Brings you right under the Golden Gate Bridge and you get a great view from both sides of the bridge as well you get to see San Francisco from a nice distance. The only thing we found was after sitting outside on the boat with the wind we were frozen after about 30 minutes, and the water can be a bit rough.

As you can see you get pretty close, for an up close view of the Bridge I recommend walking it. We were brave and walked from our hotel all the way to the pier, along it and across the bridge and then back to the pier where we decide to take a Cable car back to the hotel. Total of the trip was about 10 Miles, which we did in about 4 hours at a normal pace while stopping along to take pictures, grab a bite to eat, etc…

you cant miss Pier 39, there are all kinds of souvenir shops and other great little spots there as well, lots of restaurants as well, with an emphasis on seafood as you can imagine.

Another great attraction at Pier 39 is the sea Lions and the Aquarium, and boat tours are right there as well.

This really was a fun trip and I can’t wait for our next adventure.

Well Today is my first day officially back in the office after my trip to Tulsa. Not much going on as you can imagine, just getting back in the groove catching up on e-mails, etc…Managed to get all my Expense reports sorted out, that was a big thing to get done. Looks like things are already getting started for the next trip out to Munich. Other than that things are still the same, no new tasks for now, have to wait and see what tomorrow brings….

Well after a long trip back to the UK from Tulsa, OK USA we finally made it back home. Was a very long trip, not quite as long as going there from the Uk. We had a small layover (3.5 hours) in Chicago and we had a bit of a delay landing at Terminal 5. We had about 20 minute delay in the air and then another 15minute delay when we landed waiting for a gate. After the usual fun of waiting to get off the plane we finally got to UK immigration. Which is quite interesting, we finally get up to the agent and they just glance at my wife’s passport (She has an EU Passport), and they proceed to ask me many questions, I guess it’s because I have a Canadian Passport with Work Visa’s for both the US and the UK. Well we Finally get through and get down to baggage claim and have to wait another 20 minutes for all our bags to come out. We then made our way to the bus stop for the long term car parking. Finally we get to the car, and are on our way back to the flat getting in around 9 AM Uk time after leaving our hotel at 9:30 AM Tulsa time the day before.  As I said not quite as long as getting to Tulsa but still a long trip back especially since I managed to only sleep about 20 minutes the whole trip back. Well next trip for work is going to be to Munich as far as I know. as far as personal trip’s planning to go to Disney in Paris in about a week….should be fun…