I’ll be traveling to Europe soon. Here are some tips to make the traveling easier and more enjoyable. Forgive the personal anecdotes – making mistakes is how you get smarter.

Investigate and plan your trip well ahead of time

OK, you have limited time and a pretty good idea of where you are going and what you want to do. If you just want to fly somewhere and hitchhike randomly and stay in hostels, this post is not for you.

The Internet was invented for this. The best program ever written is Google Earth. Some think Google Maps is just as good for this but they are wrong. You can look at anywhere on earth from above, and most civilized places in Street View. Use it to see where you are going. It can show you where roads, trains, lodging, restaurants and pretty much anything else is. It shows transit stops.

flights.google.com is good for showing you all reasonable flights to where you are going. Book your flights on the airline’s website.

You can use tripadvisor.ca to show you all the amenities in a particular location. It’s worth reading the comments (ignore the really negative ones – those people are probably jerks in real life.) Use travelocity.ca to see what hotels are available for a particular date. When you decide on a hotel, go to their website and book there; travelocity, hotels.com and the other aggregate sites charge you ahead of time. That seems like an unnecessary hassle and risk. Hotels don’t usually charge you up front. Don’t believe other sites have a better price – they don’t. You can look at travelocity to compare car rentals. Again, book them at the rental company website.

Reserve your flights, rental cars and hotels well ahead of time

I assume the first things you have planned are your dates of travel, your itinerary and flights, and whether you need a car at times. If not, this post is probably not for you. However most people have limited time and certain things they want to see or do.

Airplane flights are cheaper the earlier you book. Hotels and rental cars may become scarce at busy times. When I visited France for the Vimy Ridge ceremony in 2017, I knew when I planned it that thousands of Canadians were going to be there at the same time. The nearest city, Lille, is not that big, and I figured that they would have the biggest influx of foreigners since World War 2 (for a better reason), so I booked everything there 9 months in advance. I was not wrong. I checked into my hotel in Lille the day before, and while peacefully enjoying a beer at the bar that evening, a busload of Canadian teenagers and their chaperones showed up whose bookings were messed up and there were no spare rooms in the entire city. I picked up my reserved car at the train station the next morning, and I pity someone who was relying on renting a car at the last minute.

Reserve special tours or events ahead of time

There are some things you might want to do that require a reservation well in advance. My favourite personal example is ascending the Statue of Liberty all the way up to the crown in New York. Thankfully I checked well ahead of time, and it turns out you have to reserve a spot several months in advance to do this. You can show up any time to go up to the base, but any higher requires a reservation. Note there are something like 377 stairs to climb!

Interestingly, I was able to attend 5 Broadway plays in New York (including Hamilton) without booking well ahead of time. It probably helped that I was single and traveling in November. The hotel concierge directed me to a local website that had tickets for these plays, including resale tickets from people who couldn’t make it. This might not work well at busier times or if you are not single.

Reserve your airline seats ahead of time, and check in as early as possible

Having a seat assignment in advance is the single closest thing to a guarantee you’ll actually depart with your flight. After all, if a flight is full, it makes sense that the first people to bump are those without seat reservations. Sure it costs extra, but that is going to be a very small part of the cost of your vacation. You do not want the hassle of missing a flight if you can avoid it.

After that, the last passengers to check in for the flight are typically the ones who find themselves bumped involuntarily. You can usually check in and get your boarding pass 24 hours ahead of time on your phone if you have the airline’s app. So do it.

Reserve your airplane seat at the rear of the aircraft

The best reason for this is that if the plane is not full, the empty seats are going to be at the rear because most people don’t want to sit back there, presumably because there is some advantage in egressing the aircraft a few minutes earlier. So what if it takes 5 minutes longer to get out – you’re not going to be waiting 30+ minutes at the baggage carousel because you didn’t check a bag (see below.) And when the plane stops, don’t stand up immediately like everyone else does. That’s just stupid – it’s going to take a while.

I prefer a window seat, so that is the best chance of having an empty seat beside me. You never know if you are going to be seated next to a screaming child or a fat pig. Also if there are more empty seats elsewhere, feel free to just move there. I’ve done this, the flight attendants won’t care.

The other reason is that more and more people are bringing maximum sized bags on board. If you board late there may not be room in the overhead bins, and your bag may be moved to the hold. You don’t want that because that is the reason you travel with a carry on bag (see below.) Being seated at the rear means you board early when there is plenty of room for your bag.

I don’t worry about it, but there is some circumstantial evidence to support the theory that people at the rear of an airplane have a better chance of survival in the event of a crash.

Rent a small, cheap, automatic car

I travel alone these days, so don’t need anything more than the smallest and cheapest car I can get. If you are a couple, that would apply to you too. Why would you need anything bigger and more expensive? When you are in Europe, everything is smaller. The roads are narrower and may not have shoulders. Lots of roads in the UK have a stone wall or hedge right on the edge and you have to worry about your rear-view mirrors hitting it (ask me how I know – or maybe don’t.) The parking spaces are really narrow. Who need that hassle?

I drove a standard for decades so I know what I’m talking about. In Europe it seems most people drive standards, and the rental cars are mostly standard. That’s fine on the motorways and even in the cities, but when I was driving narrow rural one-lane roads in the UK it required constant vigilance, a steely grip on the stickshift, and continuous changing of gears. An automatic would have been way more relaxing. You can rent an automatic for not much more than a standard so why not?

Keep all booking emails and boarding passes on your phone

This is not hard to do, if you access your email with your phone. I keep emails for a particular trip in its own folder. Your airline’s app will allow you to check in and carry a boarding pass that you don’t need to print. The airport scanners can read it off your phone.

Pack light – do not check a bag onto your flight

OK, I’ve traveled with women before, so this may not apply to you. I can travel indefinitely with a carry-on bag, and a small shoulder bag for my tablet and some misc stuff I might want to carry around while sightseeing during the day and stopping at pubs museums. Here’s what I pack: a laptop, two extra shirts, a Canada flag lapel pin for each shirt, a few pairs of socks and underwear, a toilet bag with toothbrush, toothpaste and spare contacts and solution. And that bag holds more electronics stuff, such as power adapter, usb cables, a cellphone caddy for the rental car, and a high-gain wifi antenna for hotels with poor wifi. Wear clothing that is made of substances not found in nature, so you can easily wash and air-dry them in your hotel room if they start to get a bit rank.

The very best reason is you don’t have to wait at the airport baggage carousel, and then it is much easier to travel around with one bag you can strap to your back. Here’s the one I use: https://www.mec.ca/en/product/5063-408/Never-Check-Duffel

When traveling, I actually wear a small man-purse around my waist, and don’t use pockets. It’s hard to pickpocket, and it holds passport, wallet, phone, keys for hotel/car and spare change. I keep the camera in a shirt pocket. Get into the habit of constantly checking that nothing is missing. Get into that habit in all the rest of your life, and you’ll never lose any of those things.

Don’t forget all necessary electronics and connectors

Twice now I have had to find a drugstore and buy a $15 USB connector that you can get for $1 on Amazon. I need a bunch of electronics and connectors: European power adapter, laptop and power supply, iPod and Apple connector, old iPod and old Apple connector, cellphone and USB, tablet and USB, external hi-gain wifi antenna and USB, camera and USB, USB expander for a laptop that only has 3 USB ports, phone caddy for rental cars, and probably more I forget offhand. Make an inventory before you leave.

Have Some Local Currency

This is mostly not necessary as everywhere civilized takes plastic for everything, but it’s worth some insurance. On the Isle of Skye, my rather remote hotel and bar were on satellite internet, which was sporadic to put it optimistically. People were not able to use their cards for a while, but I was able to pay for my beers with cash. Another time when I flew to Chicago to drive to Oshkosh, it turns out the highways are tolled. Imagine my surprise when the tollbooth didn’t take anything but US currency (not Canadian). They gave me an envelope so I could mail the toll in later, and I dutifully sent them three American quarters for the 75 cent toll when I got home.

Bring a phone caddy for the car

It’s a lot easier to navigate when you have Google Maps. Quite possibly infinitely easier (meaning you won’t get to your destination without it.) Last time in Europe, it was a bit of a pain, and a little risky, to balance the phone on my thigh for a long drive. Also if you want the screen on for hours at a time, you’ll drain the battery pretty quickly. Get a phone caddy that plugs into the cigarette lighter and has a charger. I haven’t used it yet but I just got this one: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B074SF4L8B

Take lots of pictures

You’re probably unlikely to visit many of these places again. When in your dotage and losing your long-term memory, how else are you going to remember the best experiences of your life? Photos and lots of them, well organized on your computer.

When I was younger, rationing photos was necessary. It would cost about 50 cents in film and developing cost per picture, and my budget was limited, so you had to be serious about every shot. Now of course, photos cost nothing. Might as well take hundreds of pictures, and delete only the really bad ones. Keep the mediocre ones, you will thank yourself when you are 92 years old. Take pictures of not just touristy stuff: your hotel and room, restaurants, bars, streetscapes, everything and everywhere you go.

I’m a bit fussy in this way – it’s worth having a good quality digital camera. Some high-end phones with tiny little lenses these days are pretty good, but there are certain laws of optical physics they cannot violate. Software makes up for some of this, but won’t quite substitute for a Zeiss 30x zoom lens. It’s a huge advantage to get a camera that has an extendable viewfinder that you can use in bright sunlight, unlike the LCD display on a phone. I use this one these days: https://www.sony.com/electronics/cyber-shot-compact-cameras/dsc-hx90v

Post on Facebook every day

Everybody knows the Facebook site really sucks  (you’d think 10,000 programmers could do a better job), but everyone in the world is on it, and it will probably last forever. I have a blog on WordPress, but it is more difficult to create photo and video albums there, so I’ll give Facebook that.

This isn’t for everyone. At the end of the day, I like to write up a short, hopefully entertaining description of what happened that day, and post an album of pictures and videos. I mean ALL the pictures and videos that weren’t deleted because they were awful. It’s not my problem if other people don’t want to spend the time necessary to view and appreciate them. I am not doing this for other people. As I said above, I am doing this for me, so I can revisit the trip in my later years.