joeheg, Author at Your Mileage May Vary

If You Could Only Bring One Card With You For International Travel, Which One Would It Be?

When we travel outside of the U.S., I always make sure that we’re bringing the right credit cards with us. I have several boxes to check off to ensure we’re covered just in case something goes sideways during our travels.

I want to make sure that the cards I’m bringing don’t charge any foreign currency fees. I also have to make sure that I have a card with Chip + PIN functionality, for when we’d need to use an automated kiosk. I’m going to bring my ATM card so I’ll be able to get some cash, which always comes in handy.

I’m also going to bring along any cards that we used to make reservations for the trip. If you made a train reservation, bought show tickets, arranged for a tour or paid for your hotel, they might ask to see the credit card you used to make the booking. That’s a good reason to try to stick to one or two cards when making advance reservations if you can.

What if I had to stick to only ONE card for the whole trip? Which one would it be?

Continue reading “If You Could Only Bring One Card With You For International Travel, Which One Would It Be?”

Oh Look – Airbnb Messed Up Again, Best Travel Blogs of 2020, Air Canada’s Pouring Salt Into Its Own Wounds, & More!

Happy Sunday to all of our travel friends, both near and far! Here are some articles we’ve read from other bloggers (and other sources) that we think you may like, as well, so we’re passing them along.

Continue reading “Oh Look – Airbnb Messed Up Again, Best Travel Blogs of 2020, Air Canada’s Pouring Salt Into Its Own Wounds, & More!”

Chip + PIN Cards; Why You Should Have One

By now, I’m sure you have a credit card with a chip, or EMV chip to be specific, in your possession. It’s that thing on your card that makes the person at the checkout tell you, “You need to use your chip in the bottom thingie,” or makes them say when you try to insert your chip card, “We don’t use that chip thing yet, so you need to swipe your card.”

That thing on the left side of the card is the “chip”

In the U.S.A., we like the think we lead the world in just about everything, but when it comes to credit card security we are decades behind the curve. EMV ( Europay, Mastercard and Visa) chip technology was introduced back in the 1990s and rolled out throughout Europe in the 2000s. The chip in the card is used to confirm the information instead of reading the information off the magnetic strip on the back. This technology is harder to counterfeit and, supposedly, cuts down on fraud. The banks in Europe rolled out this technology first because credit card fraud was, at the time, much more common there. When the chip cards were introduced and helped prevent fraud, the criminals went to the least protected market, the USA, so they could continue with the scamming. Lucky us.

Continue reading “Chip + PIN Cards; Why You Should Have One”

One Of My Biggest Hotel Pet Peeves

If you travel enough, there will always be something that bothers you. Sharon’s griped about the behavior of people at airports. Personally, I’m always aggravated when hotels don’t put enough power outlets in a room, but I can forgive hotels for that (well, to an extent) because maybe when the room was designed, people didn’t plugin as many things. My current pet peeve is different and something is so simple for a hotel to fix that I can’t stand when I have to deal with it.

Continue reading “One Of My Biggest Hotel Pet Peeves”

How To Tell If You’ll Be Asked To Gate Check Your Carry-On Bag

A while ago, one of our friends reached out to us with a travel-related question. We’re always glad to help our friends and if any of our readers have a question, the best way to get a quick reply is to ask on our Facebook group.

He’s not a frequent traveler and was headed out of town for a quick weekend. He wanted to just bring a carry-on bag with him but was concerned that the airline might make him gate check the bag. His question was if there’s any way to know, in advance, if the airline would be likely to gate check bags.

Continue reading “How To Tell If You’ll Be Asked To Gate Check Your Carry-On Bag”