PreTrip

15 APR 2016
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Typical crazy day before a trip. I went to my MapQuest travel blogs to start a new blog and found out to my horror that they discontinued the service as of March 31, 2016 and now I have to beg them for all my previous blogs or I have lost them forever. Not good, so now I have to find a new Travel Blogs program. Might just stick with Evernote. In the meantime, I'm going to give BonJournal a try. (update - MapQuest still has my blogs and is going to send them to me in a zip file - whew)

Weather is looking decent for when we are supposed to be in London and Edinburgh - mid 50's during the day, sunny/cloudy, lower 40's at night. Hope that holds - can do without mid 40's and torrential downpours.

Fly out of GSO mid afternoon tomorrow- hook up with some of the other AAA members at ATL and take Virgin Atlantic to LHR. For those I don't work with , this is a trip sponsored by Insight Vacations to acquaint Travel Agents with their products. (www.insightvacations.com).

Bought a TravelPass via Verizon for $10 a day. Lets me use my current data on my phone and I'm not restricted to crazy global plan limits like I've used in the past where it costs $25 for .1GB (100mb). Something new from Verizon - will see how it works.

I also might mention that when using Public wifi (which we all do), it is a good idea to have a VPN (Virtual Private Network) app on your phone or tablet. This prevents any hacker from sitting somewhere in the area and hacking into your equipment (yep, this does happen). I use one called Private Internet Access. Easy to set up - turn it on, select the country you're in and you see a little VPN logo appear at the top of your screen. www.privateinternetaccess.com

Photo below - Red Marker on NE corner of Hyde Park is our hotel. You will notice that I have marked Gordon Ramsey's Restaurant down near the Thames. Now I'll be interested to see who is going to buy me dinner there! Ha! (as it turns out, Gordon's restaurant Maze is one of the dinner spots on an Insight Gold tour - now that I'd go for!)Read more