The annotated life

So, the thing is I’m about to go to London spend a year there (actually, I’ll be there for nine months; the folowwing three will be spent in France, trying to improve my poor French) and there’s still lots to do. I have so much to get ready and organized before I finally can relax, it ain’t much fun so far. Still, I’m already looking for travel tips of all kinds. While browsing through one old email account, I found a handful of good ideas. Check them out below:

“Cheap Tricks
Money-Saving Travel Tips

The most annoying thing about traveling? The bill. (And malaria. And avian flu.) Not that you should put a price tag on the experience. Because though you might stare at the unworn $700 Narciso pants in your closet, you’ll never regret that madcap weekend in Reykjavik.

But you can make it cheaper. We asked some savvy travelers (and Dad) for their money-saving secrets. Here are the top ten:

1. Never change money at exchange counters. (Fees are outrageous.) Get cash from the ATM, but do it as infrequently as possible to avoid multiple international bank fees.

2. The $1.69 bottle of water at the corner store costs triple at the airport and quintuple at the hotel. Stock up at local markets.

3. Or pack ahead. Energy bars, trail mix, and Emergen-C packets to keep energy up and calories down. This prevents you from a) calling room service at 3 a.m. when your body wants dinner, b) stopping for overpriced lunch, c) ruining your miserable diet.

4. If the hotel offers free breakfast, eat up. (As Dad used to say, “This is it for today, kids!”) And slip some bread into your bag for later.

5. Never order room service, use the hotel’s laundry, or call out on the hotel phone. Unless you really hate your money.

6. Use your cell but beware roaming charges. It might be cheaper to rent a phone locally.

7. Take public transportation to and from the airport (plan ahead), use all-day public transportation passes (cheaper, and usually faster, than cabs), and walk (best way to see the town).

8. Use and abuse nice hotels. If you’re presentable, you can walk in, use the bathrooms, load up on beauty samples, and use their free Internet.

9. Really befriend a local so you won’t have to stay at a hotel the next night.

10. Pretend it’s your birthday. You just might get free dessert.”

I especially liked the last one. =p Anyway, even though I won’t be staying at a hotel, some of these are quite helpful. There are, though, a couple tips one could master by oneself (e.g., bottled water costs a lot less in markets everywhere in the world, I guess).

More tips and travel guides can be found at Daily Candy’s Travel section. The post above can be found here.

October will be a terrible month, I can predict as much. I still don’t wanna talk about this because I’m scared to death of jinxing it, even though there are so many people that already know about the whole thing…

Anyway, while everything is not set on stone, I’m pretty much running around all day, trying to get things done and freaking out at how much still needs to be done. Of course, in between fits I do go online to check my emails and feeds, which is where I found this Supertravel site (it was ages ago, thoug, so I do not really remember where exactly I found it).

The site contains a lot of city maps with cool restaurants, stores and museums flagged by neighbourhood. So, let’s say you’re going to London and want to find a nifty restaurant in soho. Well, you just click in the neighbourhood of your choice and voilá! A map filled with choices will appear. All you have to do is try and set the places marked with the symbol for food apart. Totally worth the visit if you want to get to know a little better certain neighbourhoods in the city you’re about to visit.