Notes on Traveling (after Baltic trip)

Photography

We both carry point-and-shoot cameras that were high-end models when they were bought, about ten years ago. We have avoided DSLRs to reduce the amount of equipment we have to carry—lenses in particular. My camera is a Nikon Coolpix P100, which has more capabilities than Fran’s Canon Powershot SX130 IS, but it’s a little bulkier. I carry it in a case hung from my belt, while Fran can fit hers in her purse.

I take a lot of pictures. Sometimes I must remind myself to stop and just look at things. Fran takes fewer (but better) pictures. She takes more care and waits until people are out of the frame.
My typical camera setting is to use the programmed auto, which is set to shoot in three-shot bursts, bracketing the F-stop by one on each side. In situations with a lot of contrast, I will take two such bursts, locking the exposure on the brighter or darker parts before composing the shot. I have the ISO set to automatically compensate for dark or bright conditions. In low-light conditions (such as in a museum), I use shutter priority mode. I almost never use a flash or a tripod. When I get home from a trip, I spend months going through my photos and doing HDR merges of the three-shot bursts.

In addition to the two main cameras, I have a tiny Nikon Coolpix S3700. I carry this camera almost all the time even when I’m not on vacation, just in case an opportunity for a good photo presents itself. It is very basic, but it’s small enough to fit in a pocket. It also has WIFI, which means I can upload photos to a smartphone if I want to share them during the trip (which I seldom do). It also came in handy when the batteries in one of our main cameras ran out in the middle of the day.
We don’t take selfies. We don’t take pictures of our food. We don’t take forced perspective pictures. The pictures we take of each other are most often in cafes or pictures of the other person taking pictures.

Luggage

We each take a small roller bag and a small backpack. The roller bags travel as checked baggage, while the backpacks go in the overhead bins. The backpacks hold our cameras, a change of clothes, our documents, anything we’ll need on the plane, and anything we want to have as soon as we arrive. I also have a small over-the-shoulder bag, in cross-section about the same as a letter-size sheet of paper. It has lots of pockets and divisions. I use it as my under-seat item on the plane to hold books, a tablet, and papers. After arriving I us it for maps, guidebook, and whatever we need just for the day.

Clothing

We aim for a “nice casual” look. We don’t plan to attend any functions that require men to wear coats and ties, with the equivalent for women. At the same time, we want to be able to walk into a nice restaurant or to be respectful in a church or memorial. That means no shorts. I pack a mixture of better-looking jeans, cargo pants, and slacks. For shirts, I go with polos or casual button-ups (no T-shirts). For outerwear, we bring light raincoats and sweaters. We can wear both if it gets cold. I like to wear hats, but I need to fit them in my luggage. That means a flat cap and a fisherman. I have a pair of leather walking shoes that don’t look like trainers. I also have a pair of leather loafers to make it easier to get through airport security. They work fine for walking in on dry days.

Other Gear

A few other things we carry on our trips:

• Binoculars: I have a compact pair of binoculars that fit into a belt pouch. I use it from time to time while sight-seeing. It also comes in handy for reading street signs. In European cities, such signs are usually attached to the sides of buildings, often only one per corner. If I am on the opposite side of the street, I sometimes use the binoculars to see where I am.
• Pedometer: I always carry a pedometer when I’m out walking, even if I’m not traveling. Mine is pretty simple, with no computer or phone interface. It does remember the step total for each of the past seven days, and it can translate steps into distance, based on the length of my stride.
• Tablet: I have a small, inexpensive WiFi-only tablet. It gives me access to the internet in hotels and airports, and the memory card is filled with music I like for listening on the plane. It’s inexpensive enough that if it were to be lost or damaged, it wouldn’t be much of a loss.
• GPS: I have carried a dedicated GPS device on our trips for use in an emergency, when we get so lost that we can’t find our way using paper maps. I haven’t needed it in about three years. With the improvements in smartphones, I may dispense with this in the future.
• Chargers and adapters: Gadgets need to be charged. Our cameras use removeable batteries, for which we have spares. We have chargers that we can use overnight or when we are out during the day, so that we always have fresh batteries on hand. The tablet, phone, and GPS all use USB-type charging (each with a different cable, of course!). We take along multi-socket AC adapters so that we can charge everything, even when the hotel room has few spare outlets. Of course, we need to bring the appropriate plug adapters for the countries we are visiting. Fortunately, must modern electronic gear can handle different voltages, and so we don’t need to bring transformers.

• Smartphone: I am not a heavy user of cellphones. When I’m not traveling, my phone stays turned off and plugged in at home almost all the time. However, mobile phones have become so ubiquitous that one can no longer count on finding a phone when you need one. Indeed, some hotels no longer have phones in the rooms. Thus, we do carry smartphones in case we need to make calls. We do not post pictures and bulletins to social media while on trips. Still less do we check our work email. The whole purpose of a vacation is to get away from all that. Some other uses for phones:

o Alarm clock: Another appliance you can’t count on finding in your lodging anymore is a clock. Without a house phone, there is no way to request a wake-up call.

o Bus and train schedules: If you’re in a station or at a bus stop, it can be comforting to know when the next ride is due to arrive.

o Translator: This doesn’t work very well, but we have used it to translate signs and museum labels. In principle, one could use it to moderate a conversation with someone who didn’t have a common language with you, but I think that would be very awkward.

o Camera: It’s a matter of last resort, but if we are traveling light we can still use the phone to take the odd photo or video.

• Notebook: Last, but certainly not least, is a small notebook. I don’t mean an underpowered laptop computer—I mean a real paper book to take notes in. The kind I like is about the size of a checkbook (if you remember what those look like), but in “portrait” orientation. It’s really the best object for recording information on the go. This narration was built from short phrases that wrote during the trip. These helped me to remember what we did each day. I always set aside one page to record purchases. This make it easier to fill out the customs declaration form when we return.

Thanks for the info, Dav! It sounds like your baggage system is very similar to mine.

Thanks for posting these details. Which guidebooks did you use?

I have one more use for your cell phones - pedometers! If you have a Samsung, it's built in as the S-Health app. I don't know how it works on other Android or Apple phones, but they can certainly act as pedometers too.

Thanks for a very informative post!

Thanks for some very interesting and enlightening details in this report. I don't use technology at all in traveling, relying on paper maps, etc. Going to Lithuania is one of the travel destinations.

Under the Indo-European languages the Baltic langauges, ie Latvian and Lithuanian have their own sub-group like Romance (Spanish French, It., Port, etc), Slavic (Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, etc).

Latvian and Lithuanian belong to the "Baltic" sub-group.

Thanks for another very informative post. I enjoyed reading all of the posts on your Baltic trip. My smart phone is my pedometer, alarm clock, GPS device, map, translator, bus/train schedule, speedometer, and camera. :) It's also often my train ticket, too.

Happy travels! Thanks for sharing so much about this trip!

Thanks, Dav. This is very useful information. Great post.

Harold, the books we used are Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, and Eyewitness Travel. Rick's doesn't cover Latvia or Lithuania, although we did use it for Estonia.

Yes, I do have a pedometer app for my phone. One of my pocket watches also has that function. So I'm pretty well covered.

Glad you found this useful.

--Dav

I am familiar with the Rough Guide The Baltic Countries ...very informative, loaded with pertinent and useful information, maps, historical background, etc, especially as it applies to Lithuania, my main interest in that region. Prior to 1914 Tallinn was known as Reval.