Our last morning in San Francisco was spent with a bit of chill time in the morning, writing post cards, doing laundry, taking the kids to a playground and the like.
We then hopped in the car to get to the ‘sports basement’, a massive outdoors store, to pick up some replacement travel gear. Theoretically this should have been about a five minute drive from our hotel, but unfortunately the TomTom on my iPhone didn’t pick up a signal and when it did, it didn’t handle the extensive detours in place well at all. After circling around several times and almost finding our way onto the Golden Gate Bridge, we finally made it there – half an hour later!
It was just like in the good old days before satnav made getting around in a car almost too easy! Problem is that we’re so reliant on it now, that we’re pretty unprepared without it…
For better or for worse, technology has made travel much easier even since the last time we were on the road ten years ago. It certainly helps avoid unplanned ‘adventures’ and it could be argued either way whether that is a good thing, but we’re certainly of the view to use it to our full advantage to make the travel easier going for the kids.
For anybody interested in how we plan to do this;
Between us, we have a couple of iPads and iPhones, each loaded with apps and books for schooling the kids, books for us, spotify for music, Tripit app to organise our itinerary, skyscanner to book our flights, skype for keeping in touch, TomTom for getting from A to B (most of the time!), tripadvisor app to work out what to do and where to stay, and also have a number of lonely planet ebooks for the places we think we might be going.
We have a digital camera that we back up onto one of the iPads every so often, which in turn backs up to iCloud when we have wifi along with photos taken on the iPhones. We also have a wireless iPad keyboard / cover for emails, blog and diary. On top of that, we also have a couple of ‘travelsims’ that give cheaper roaming rates for calls and data, although we’ll probably buy local sims anywhere where we stay more than a couple of weeks. Another handy little trick is to cache google maps into your phone’s memory while connected to wifi before heading out. The GPS doesn’t use data, so you can still see where you are on the map, but at no cost.
Aside from the obvious benefits of all of this, a whole lot of travel space is saved that we’d otherwise need for guides, maps, books, games, itinerary paperwork etc.
The rest of the afternoon was spent with Kiley cruising around a couple of the more ‘up and coming’ and edgy suburbs of town – Hays Valley and the Mission. We must have seen a few dozen homeless people including one crazed looking guy lying on the footpath with an impressive looking knife collection. We were wondering before our travels how the kids would react to this kind of site and were surprised when we asked them later in the evening what their impressions were. They both said that they hadn’t even noticed any homeless people.
We rounded off the day with Iris taking a pilates lesson and Kiley & Michael treating us to a superb farewell dinner at an Italian restaurant before heading back to the hotel to pack for Mexico.
The kids doing their school work and postcards
Californians are pretty crazy about their dogs…
…crazy
