Creative Cogitation

What I would do dif­fer­ently…  Gen­eral Travel Tips

If you are going to be in Italy for a few weeks, rent­ing an apart­ment may be a more afford­able solu­tion than stay­ing at a Hotel.  Don’t mis­un­der­stand me, the Utell Prop­erty Hotel Ari­zona was fine; my room had its own bath­room, closet, desk, TV & refrigerator-the tow­els were changed daily, the water in the bath­room had good pres­sure and was hot even in the mid­dle of the night and their con­ti­nen­tal break­fast was among the best to be had locally – at least that was my impres­sion when I talked to other trav­el­ers stay­ing else­where; also the staff were friendly, help­ful and their Eng­lish was bet­ter than my Ital­ian by far. Hotel Ari­zona had a com­puter with Inter­net access, charged on a slid­ing scale of time purchased-I bought 5 hours for 10 Euros to check a web­mail account daily, and still had some time left. But if I had my own apart­ment it would have been 20–30% less expen­sive, even less if I rounded up a room­mate to split the cost, and I would have had a kitchen in which to pre­pare my meals.  As it was I ate a lot of cold cuts, bread, and sea­sonal pro­duce pur­chased at the Mer­cado Cen­trale in Flo­rence – also there were sev­eral Super­mar­kets to pick up soda pop, yogurt etc., but with­out a stove or microwave oven my options were limited.

I should have learned more of the lan­guage.  You can cer­tainly get by in Flo­rence speak­ing Eng­lish, but I still think I should have made a bet­ter effort to pick up the native tongue.  As it was I under­stood a lot of what I heard because of my famil­iar­ity with Span­ish, but I could not respond for the most part.  I did bring a Frommer’s sur­vival Ital­ian guide with me as well as Rick Stevens travel guide for Tus­cany 2010.  Both were use­ful.  If you can’t find a Frommer’s phrase­book and cul­ture guide – sev­eral other com­pa­nies pro­duce some­thing similar.

For the long flight there and back, bring soft earplugs so you can sleep. If you are sen­si­tive to light, you might also bring an eye-mask to block out the light.  Many trav­el­ers had those U-shaped pil­lows to wrap around their neck too.  But for me noise was the big issue, so foamy earplugs were my need.

Even though I got both the sea­sonal and swine flu shot before I left – I came down with the com­mon cold on my last evening there.  Another tip is to bring your favorite cold and flu rem­edy with you.  As it was I did not have the time in the morn­ing before my flight to hit the Far­ma­cia and even if I had gone there, what would I have picked up?  I don’t know for­eign over the counter meds.  Given that my flight out of Flo­rence was can­celled and sub­se­quently I was booked on the marathon flight from hell via Delta – I spent the worst day of my ill­ness run­ning through air­ports & sand­wiched between other pas­sen­gers on long flights with­out any med­i­cine what­so­ever; I was miserable.

Do not go into an Ital­ian restau­rant that has no cus­tomers.  Chances are the food is not great and worse than that you may be overcharged-some of these awful restau­rants have hus­tlers stand­ing out­side try­ing to bully you in.  Don’t give in, just move along.  Some of the best food I had in Flo­rence was not the most expen­sive.  Veg­e­tar­ian is not that hard to do in Italy, but halāl is a bit more dif­fi­cult unless you go to a döner kebab.  Once again, learn­ing enough of the lingo to con­vey that you do not eat meat, to ask if the meal is halāl, or to express other dietary restric­tions is ben­e­fi­cial. I am very low main­te­nance in this depart­ment, I’ll eat just about any­thing, but I did dine with an Islam prac­ti­tioner on sev­eral occa­sions and I am report­ing my obser­va­tions regard­ing her efforts to find food she could eat.

My hotel gave me a small map of the city when I checked in.  You want one of those and you want to carry it with you.  Flo­rence is not a big city so it would be very hard to stay lost for long, but a good map makes walk­a­bout so much easier.

Skip the traveler’s checks – they are too hard to cash. A cou­ple of hun­dred dol­lars cash to con­vert into Euros once you are in Europe, so you can catch a cab to your hotel & grab a bit of food before you crash and burn, and an ATM card are the way to go. For­tu­nately I had noti­fied my bank of my intent to travel to Italy, had money in my account and brought my ATM card with me.  When cash­ing a check proved dif­fi­cult I found an ATM in my net­work and with­drew the max­i­mum amount of Euros, 250 Euros in my case.  My ratio­nale is that I would limit the amount of fees I would be charged for access­ing my account via a for­eign ATM if I took out one big chunk of change rather than sev­eral smaller ones.  I also noti­fied the credit card com­pa­nies of my intent to travel abroad and where I would be so that my charges would not be refused because I was roam­ing far afield.  I brought 2 charge cards just in case one didn’t work, but I didn’t need the extra one.

Think about fork­ing over the dough for a daytrip out­side Flo­rence: Sienna, Pisa, a wine tour etc.  Appar­ently they are very easy to book and worth the money.  Be advised that you will be gone all day so there is no pos­si­bil­ity of con­duct­ing busi­ness on a day you decide to do one of these tours.

In gen­eral my attire was appro­pri­ate for the weather, which I check into before I packed.  Flo­rence in Decem­ber has tem­per­a­tures around 50 F (10 C) & it rains peri­od­i­cally.  Until the last 2 days, when it became bit­terly cold I was fine with my cloth­ing choices: Lay­ers that included a wind­proof & rain­proof shell, a sweater and a long sleeved shirt worked well.  I should have brought at least one pair of long johns for those days when the weather dropped to freez­ing, but I left them at home.

Flo­rence is a walk­ing city with a lot of cob­ble stone.  Stiletto-heeled shoes, whereas styl­ish are NOT good to wear strolling around Flo­rence.  The locals wear fash­ion­able flat boots this time of year.  I took a pair of black, well-worn ten­nis shoes with me; I live in Phoenix and wear san­dals year round so I knew I needed a comfy pair of shoes to min­i­mize the blis­ters that I would get from sud­denly cram­ming my toot­sies into a pair of closed-toed shoes for extended peri­ods of hik­ing.  When want­ing to be chic, Flo­ren­tines will check their walk­ing shoes with their coats, and slip into the stilet­tos at the event.

Note: Edison’s fac­ing on to Piazza Repub­blica in Flo­rence has an Eng­lish lan­guage book sec­tion on the third floor.  They also have a smaller sec­tion in French.  Most of the books are in Ital­ian of course.  Any­way I throw this in here because you will prob­a­bly be spend­ing some time in the air­port, or sit­ting at the show doing noth­ing and a book is always a nice way to kill time.

Cell phones in the US are CDMA, Cell Phones in Europe are GSM.  That means your cell phone that you use in the US will prob­a­bly not work in Europe.  As for me I have travel before with out being able to call any­one and so I opted out of upgrad­ing and extend­ing my cell phone plan in order to obtain a tri-band or quad-band phone.  I also decided I did not need to spend money on a GSM phone with min­utes and a call­ing card for DH in order to make con­tact, but the other artist from Phoenix trav­eled with some friends; they did rent phones from Cel­lu­lar Abroad and they told me the phones worked but the cov­er­age was a bit spotty.  When my flight got can­celed out of Flo­rence I did find myself wish­ing a did have a phone, but it all worked out.  In my opin­ion, if you are trav­el­ing by your­self and do not have peo­ple you need to con­tact at odd hours at home, then the need for a cell phone is ques­tion­able.  If you have a tri-band or quad-band phone already, your car­rier may unlock your phone’s SIM card so you can swap it out with a local Ital­ian carrier’s SIM card, but you may need to give your cell phone ser­vice pro­vide a bit of notice so they can do this for you.  Or you can con­tact Cel­lu­lar Abroad or some other ser­vice and buy or rent cell phones and service.

That is all of the gen­eral travel tips I can think of that have not been cov­ered in pre­vi­ous posts.

For things spe­cific to the Flo­rence Bien­nale, I will sub­mit a post on that sub­ject next.

Do you have any last minute tips for travelers?

Yours in art,

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the $7651.31 I charged to attend this event; this amount is the sum all the receipts I can find relat­ing to the trip-about $4,000 is the Bien­nale artist’s share, then hotel & air­fare, plus pack­ag­ing for my art, taxis, meals in Italy, postage and other inci­den­tal expenses. I have raised about $2079 in dona­tions–many thanks to those who have con­tributed to this event.  But I need more assis­tance and every lit­tle bit helps.

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