International Travel Group Meeting - Sunday August 2 @ 9:30am Pacific Time

Please send me the invite; I have three or four eSIM apps on my phone and they each have their own peculiarities.

I hate to miss but will be with family.

Andrea, I would like to come. I will have just returned from Iceland and would be happy to share a report, and I also used a Pay as you Go eSIM on this trip that is working out very well and I’d be happy to talk about that.

Please sign me up. Thanks, Andrea.

Andrea, thank you so much for telling me about this. Iceland, yes, I would love to attend!

Avi, I figured you would have information about eSIMs. I’m looking forward to hearing about them.

TTM, you are excused. This time. ;-)

Mardee, that is good timing. I loved your pictures from Ireland.

Wanderlust58, I’m looking forward to seeing you again.

mikliz97, I’m so happy you can join us.

Include me, please.

Please include me also. I’m curious about Iceland and know absolutely zero about Esims.

I’ve been out of town. I’m home now and it looks like this needs to be bumped up.

Hi Andrea. I also just got back from Iceland a week ago and would like to attend.

This was my first visit to Iceland since 1986 (!) when I stopped briefly for a two-day layover on my way back from my first trip to Europe. Iceland has changed a bit since then (an understatement).

Of course, mikliz97 is the real expert on Iceland (she was very helpful to me in planning this trip!) so I would defer to her on most things, but can add a perhaps unique perspective from fresh (and still jet-lagged) eyes. I'll also be curious to hear others' impressions.

PM sent.

Yes, please add me. I might need to miss part two, which is unfortunate since I’d like to learn about eSIMs. Thanks.

David in Seattle, thanks for joining us to share what you experienced.

Barb, I’m so glad you can join us. We’re going to be in your neck of the woods in September. I’m hoping we can get together.

Would love to join the meeting. Didn't get to spend a lot of time in Iceland, but did get to see quite a bit.
Thanks.

Hi Andrea. I'd like to attend if there's room, but give away the spot if you're running out of room. I'd love to see everyone again and hear about Iceland. I was in Reykjavik for a day and a half on a cruise, so I don't have anything to contribute and I wouldn't stay for the eSIM discussion, not relevant for me.

David in Seattle--Thank you for the kind words. I look forward to hearing about your trip!

Chani, there are no longer space limits. See you Sunday!

Thanks, Andrea. I'm looking forward to it. 🥰

Andrea, please include me. I’ve been to Iceland only for a short visit and would love to learn more about the country. I’ll leave the meeting early due to another Zoom call I’ve scheduled. Thanks always for coordinating this special get together.

Please add me to the meeting. Thank You.

sorry, we will be in The Big Smoke with pelican chicks

We will miss you, Nigel.

See you all tomorrow. If anyone else is interested you have 24 hours to let me know.

This sounds so interesting!
Please send me the link too!
Thanks.

I just emailed the zoom link. I hope things go better this morning and there aren’t the problems I encountered last month. If people can let me know if they did or didn’t get the link I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Andrea, I checked both my emails (including spam filter) and I did not get the link.

Thanks LB. I don’t know what’s going on. I had to individually put each email address in. The meeting link shows 15 attendees.

If anyone else can let me know if they got the link or not I would appreciate it. I’m annoyed that they changed how to set the meetings up. Not only is it much more time consuming, it’s apparently not reliable either.

Andrea--I too did not get the zoom link.

Arggg… I’m so frustrated. I’m not sure how to resolve this. I’ll keep trying.

I didn't get the link either.

Hugh and Kris

[email protected]

Okay, I just scheduled a new meeting and hopefully this time it will work. Please let me know if you got it.

I didn't get either one

I have not gotten the link as of nine minutes after the hour.

Andrea, did you send out the invite yet? I didn’t receive it

I also have not received it and it is 9:10.

Sorry, I'm not going to be able to make it for today's session. I came down with some awful respiratory infection Monday, and after fighting with it for 6 days it's still completely kicking my butt (I'm calling it the Icelandic Flu, and that may be unfair, but 8 days after getting home I'm still in Helheim - Viking Hell, more or less).

My trip report from Viking Hell follows: It's cold – REALLY cold – and the wind blows strongly, incessantly, cutting right through any rags you might wrap yourself in. But the scenery is amazing - bleak, empty, desolate, all in shades of grays and blacks, and strangely there's barbed wire everywhere that catches and holds you while you bleed and shiver (from my vivid nightmares yesterday). And, as you might expect, everything was crazy expensive! Thirty dollars for a sandwich?! Come on!!!

Hope this morning's session goes well. (Andrea, FWIW I do not see any zoom invite in my mailboox - but don't need it now so don't waste any effort trying to loop me in for today.

Takk, og komdu heil á húfi! (Thanks and stay safe)

I didn't get it either - I hope everything is okay.

Andrea, would you want to try and post it here? You could always delete it after the meeting starts.

I didn't get one either

David in Seattle--Thank you for the morning giggle! I hope you feel better soon, but at least you still have a sense of humor:)

I just logged into the meeting, though I’m not sure anyone got the link. I’ll wait for 20 minutes and if no one is able to log in I will end it. I’m so sorry about this and hopefully I can come up with a solution before the next one.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81521597848?pwd=Eay6XzN4oKPqvzYEkPUOk4ucxvSAbd.1

This is the meeting link. Please let me know if it works for you.

This works!!!

My apologies again for the difficulties this morning. Most of the people were able to join us. Hopefully by the next meeting I will have this figured out. 🤞🏼

Hi Ya'll! Hate I missed this mornings' meeting, had family plans for my grandsons' first birthday. Looking forward to seeing you all on August 30.

Thank you again Andrea and Jim for all you do!

David, I hope you feel better soon. Maybe you would like to join us another time.

Jody, a first birthday party is far more important than a travel meeting. I hope the little one had fun.

Thanks Andrea (and mikliz97), I'm feeling a bit less awful than yesterday, and my doc says I should be back to something akin to baseline in another 3-4ish days. Until then, I'll be gobbling drugs and attempting to get some sleep.

Please post details of the next one when you get a moment. Thanks.

Andrea, thank you again for keeping this forum going. Even though Iceland wasn't on my list before, and still isn't after, I loved hearing about everyone's experiences.

Here's the super-easy wine bottle opener on Amazon.

David-in-Seattle, I typically post the International Meeting 9 days or so ahead of time. They are usually the first Sunday of the month, though it can vary according to my availability. The next meeting will be on August 30.

Chani, it was good to see you yesterday. And that wine bottle opener is amazing. I just put it in my Amazon cart. I can’t order it yet because we are leaving town this morning to head to the coast to camp (glamp?) and escape the triple digit heat we have this week. I don’t want packages to arrive while we are gone. I’m looking forward to trying it out. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Andrea--Thank you so much for this, and especially for your effort to make this a go after being beaten back a bit. It was so nice to "meet" many of you!

David--Glad you are on the mend:)

Andrea, thanks for another great meeting! I'm sorry you had problems getting the link out, but I'm glad it all worked out.

Here's a link to Bcengi, which is the one I use, and it's pretty self-explanatory. https://travel.bcengi.com/
Just an FYI, I used around $6.50 of Bcengi's data and that was for about 10 days of travel.

Here are instructions for using both an eSIM (like Bcengi) and T-Mobile on an iPhone. Keep in mind that you should use TMobile first, since you get the 5GB of high-speed data included in your plan. That way you can leave the Bjengi eSIM alone until you really need it.

STEPS:

Configure your iPhone settings like this before your flight.

For using the Primary (T-Mobile) iPhone, first go to Cellular Settings, click on "Cellular Data" and select "Primary" (this should be your T-Mobile number). Scroll down to Allow Cellular Data Switching and turn it OFF.

Go back to the previous screen, scroll down then and click on your primary number (again, T-Mobile) under SIMS. Scroll down to Data Roaming and turn it ON.

Next, go back to SIMS, and turn your eSIM (in my case, Bcengi) ON.
Scroll down to Data Roaming and toggle it OFF (it may already be off).

It's important to turn off "Allow Cellular Data Switching" under the main Cellular menu. Otherwise your iPhone will jump back and forth between plans based on tower strength, draining your eSIM's data (in this case, Bcengi).

Once your T-Mobile data is used up and you get the dreaded message from them, you would go back into settings and reverse all of the above.

Here is one tip for saving data:
When you take a lot of photos, your phone is always backing them up to the Cloud, which uses a lot of data, depending on how many photos you take. An easy way to stop that is to go SETTINGS-->APPS-->PHONE, then toggle Cellular Data OFF. This forces your phone to wait till you have wifi before it can back up the photos.

Mardee, thank you so much for this detailed information. Now I just need to figure out what will work best for us.