Journal of an Urbane Gorilla

If you come to a fork in the road, take it*

The other day, I started checking out the WiFi hotspots in Vienna, Austria and Florence, Italy for our trip next spring. This was a direct request from Grams. She said, “If you’re going to be posting to your blog, you don’t want to be schlepping your laptop all over the place just to get a signal.” I couldn’t deny her logic even though she bought a wheelie-cart backpack for my computer, which makes travel a lot easier for me.

Now, I told you how I found a site with hotspots all over the world. I downloaded the sites as an Excel file. I did this so I could sort the hotspots by their postal code in both cities. Then, using the postal code that matched the hotels’ I looked for the closest WiFi spots. That’s where the irony started.

The city fathers of Vienna like to say that their city has more WiFi hotspots than anywhere else. They do have a lot, but Vienna is also a very big city. So, the hotspots are not all that near our hotel. However, little Florence, which has far fewer hotspots, has 2 hotspots that are just a few footfalls away from our cosy room at the Hotel Ritz.

So, having all the hotspots in the world does not trump proximity. Here’s the beauty part: It turns out that the hotel in Vienna has data ports in all its rooms. Easy peasy, I’m set.

A dopo e Moochas smoochas,

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

*Yogi Berra

Come bright star, beam kindly on me*

I was checking out internet capacity in Vienna. Bingo! Vienna has a plethora of Wi-Fi hot spots. A few years ago, all Grams wanted me to find before we left was where internet cafes were wherever we were traveling. Now I have find out if the hotel has Wi-Fi or internet connections and where the Wi-Fi hot spots are located.

As you’ll remember from our New Year’s trip to Paris, the Mickey Dees’ there have free Wi-Fi. There was a place next door to our hotel that had pay-to-play Wi-Fi, but Madame would make me schlep down to the golden arches for the freebie. Isn’t it interesting that the McDonald’s in Paris has great coffee, but the one in Venice is truly bad? Go figure. I do admit that she’s invested in a rolly-cart backpack carrier for the laptop, so the walk wasn't all that bad.

I’ll print out the list of Wi-Fi hot spots and then mark them on our map of Vienna. That’s so she can find them fast. Also, I’ve started the travel binder. The binder has printouts of all of our info. I have dividers for the cities and activities, so we can easily find what we need, when we need it.

Years ago, Grams picked out the binder. It has a zipper and lots of places to put pencils, etc. It also has clear pockets where we put photo booth pics. These photos are for any photo i.d. cards we might need while travelling. Gotcha covered.

Grams also makes sure to scan all of our credit cards, plane tickets, and passports. These she keeps with her until we get to the hotel and then they are put into the safe. We’ve never had a problem, but it’s ‘braces and belt,’ if you know what I mean.

When we went to Paris the last time, Grams got an American Express cash card in Euros. She used it at ATMs and for shopping. It was dead clever on her part, (until she ran out of cash the day before we left). I say this because credit card companies are now starting to add an extra charge for just using their cards and for getting cash in foreign countries. Also, you know what the exchange rate was when you got it and you don’t have to figure it out each day.

The picture is me having fun with Photoshop. The silhouette is of Grams when she was little (like 1949 - the olden days BG-Before Gweeds). I like it a lot, but today I was trying something I’ve seen done and wanted to try. I took a photo of Caernarfon from Emlyn’s study and made a translucent layer of it over the silhouette. Just messing about, but it’s fun.

A dopo e Moochas smoochas,

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

*I am a young man living in sorrow
'Tis for a lady known for her charms
Too well I love her and every morrow
Ever I pine and long for her arms.
Better it is to show my passion
Than to endure this restless pain
Come bright star, beam kindly on me
Then shall my pure love be near me again.
So does the wild young man implore me
I fear my hand must yet be bound
So many warnings are before me
From married lovers all around.
I'm too young to be tied to another
I must make discretion my guide
When I am ready to take a lover
You shall hear how I decide

Y Ferch O'r Scer (The Lady of Sker) Welsh folk song
(This is for you, Bronwyn)

Welcome home, cousin Ryumi!