A Little More About Tech And Travel

Like Dan, I’m also back from a trip to Scotland. His piece covered most of the issues regarding the life of a modern international traveler, but I had a few bonus observations to share.

The best thing I did for this trip was track it all in a single note in Apple Notes. I created the note back in February, shared it with my wife, and began sketching possible itineraries (with the help of Rick Steves) in the note. Lauren and I would talk and then I’d revise, finally coming up with a day-by-day itinerary that made sense.

When it came time to implement the plan, I put flight information in the note, and then began adding hotel reservations beneath every day. (Including information about the one B&B that wanted us to pay in cash.) The rental car details went right under the information about our arrival at Inverness airport.

At some point, I sought hiking advice from David Smith, who has spent a lot of time hiking in Scotland. His response, sent via Slack, went right under the day I had reserved for walking around the Isle of Skye.

When our tour company sent me bus and ferry tickets for the Isle of Mull as PDFs, I inserted those into the note at the day we were taking the tour. And later on, when Lauren made a few dinner reservations in advance, those details also went into the Note.

The final detail before we left was also the final detail I used when we returned: our parking space at the off-airport parking lot at San Francisco airport.

Oh, and to facilitate quick access, I added a Notes widget to my home screen, and set it to point to my specific 2024 UK Trip note, so I had one-tap access to everything in that note, without any messing around inside the Notes app.

A few additions

Dan mentioned USB charging, and I did find a lot of it—in hotels, in the rental car, and on our airplane. Without fail, all of the USB ports I saw were USB-A—which is a tragedy, given that I’ve fully converted to the USB-A lifestyle. Fortunately, I had enough foresight to bring an inline USB-A-to-C adapter (sort of like this one, but not that actual model). I’m going to be packing these in all my traveling bags going forward, because while my house is no longer Dongletown, the larger world certainly is.

On the advice of the tour company we used at Mull, I also brought an external battery—and used it a couple of times at the end of a long day when we weren’t anywhere to plug in. The problem was that all my available batteries at home charge via micro-USB and offer power via USB-A. I packed a cursed micro-USB and used the inline adapter and managed to make it work, but I think I’m going to pick up a modern USB-C based battery for next time.

I share Dan’s frustration with using an international eSIM with Messages. eSIMs are great (all our data was covered for $20 when our American cellular carrier would’ve charged us $240), but it wreaks havoc on iMessage. People with their numbers attached to Contacts were constantly identified by their phone numbers. Why?! So frustrating.

Finally, with both of my kids out of the house, Lauren and I traveled alone for most of the trip and therefore we didn’t need to use FaceTime as a conduit for a baby monitor, as Dan’s family did. That said, we did find a bittersweet use for FaceTime on this trip. At about 4 a.m. in Glasgow, our daughter rang us on FaceTime. Her elderly cat was suddenly, unexpectedly injured and Jamie and a friend were going to need to make the hard decision pet owners have to make sometimes. Even bleary-eyed and thousands of miles away, we were able to give her some support and wisdom in a difficult time, live, via FaceTime. I’m glad we were able to have that conversation, as difficult as it was.

What else? I paid for everything (except the B&B that demanded cash!) with Apple Pay via my Apple Watch. It was my first time using Apple Pay with Transit for London, and tapping to enter and exit the turnstiles was special. Apple Maps excelled at letting me navigate around London, including which lines to take, which trains to board, and which station exits to take.