The connected traveler

Boarding Ryanair flight FR7353 CRL to EDI

I’ve always been bitten by the traveling and exploring bug. As long as I can remember I traveled along with parents and grandparents to amazing diverse European destinations. Those weren’t the obvious touristy things, but the places around it, broadening my vision. As soon as I started to travel alone, this trend continued. I’ve never felt like a tourist, but rather a habitant of the world, adapting rituals as I go along. In fact, I roll my eyes when I see tourists standing in the middle of a busy road, with a brightly coloured raincoats, juggling their library copy of Lonely Planet with a blotchy map from the visitor centre, trying to figure out what street they are on.

A lovely cup of tea, a perfect opportunity to check things to see on your phone.

Not that I mind people who are prepared, but me, I have a different strategy. I’m a Connected Traveler. As soon as I land in the UK, I swap out my SIM card for a local prepaid one,top up and activate mobile data.

When I travel in London I check my tube journey with the Tube Map app by mxdata. Looking up a nice place to eat, my first stop is Foursquare, which I have been using for years now. And who needs a map, when you have Apple and Google map apps, which just make everything so much easier.

With mobile data to burn on short trips, the only limit is your battery life, which I solve with my Jupio Powerbank. While walking with a connected iPhone seems like a thing only happening in Asia, but just like the Selfie Stick, the trend of charging your phone on the go will come to our parts as well.

Being connected all the time does have their benefits, like sharing moments with friends, it’s also easy to get lost in the constant stream of social. As an English bilingual speaker, my mind also switches to British mode, which makes constant Dutch interruptions more of an annoyance than a benefit.

Saramago, a great car bar in the Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, which I discovered through Foursquare.

Still, being able to communicate with local friends through services like iMessage or Facebook Messenger makes that the £10 investment makes the phone bill a lot simpler than switching on roaming. Or at least until Neelie Kroes can get rid of roaming charges in Europe.