Swiss-Itenary, TGV and Gizmo

Another Friday, and here I am, thinking about what to write for my blog ;) I think I should have kept track of my Friday blogging or the changes I made on Fridays :D. Well, this post isn’t going to be about Fridays, but it is about our Switzerland itinerary and my experience with the TGV.

You might have noticed there have been a lot of posts by Pamela recently – I wish she had done this during our other trips as well. It’s GREAT that she’s so active on this nowadays.

Secondly, when traveling for more than three days, we carry a laptop. It helps download pictures as the memory cards get full within 1-2 consecutive days of sightseeing. On our return to Paris via TGV, one of the fastest trains in Europe, I discovered that the first class has AC 220V power sockets to connect a laptop. This allows us to do pending work, view photos, or watch films on DVD without worrying about recharging the battery. It was great, as my current laptop battery doesn’t last more than 15-20 minutes. Here’s a picture of Pamela downloading photos from the card.

Photos from the Golden-Pass train we took that morning. In the 1st compartment of TGV, another difference is the seat size with enough legroom, as they only have three seats per row compared to four in the 2nd class.

Lastly, though I like having all the latest and greatest gizmos, I usually run quite behind in reality compared to others. The biggest reason is, of course, financial constraints, and another is the high cost in Europe with the ugly VAT system.

My laptop is an old Pentium-III, my digital camera is a 3-megapixel, and my mobile phone is four years old. Hmm… for the mobile phone, it’s not entirely true, as I lost the new one within four months of use.

So here are my next gizmo dreams:

I hope to upgrade my camera to a new Panasonic LUMIX DMC-LX2 as soon as it’s released and gets good reviews from other users, not those blurry images its current sibling has. I hope to carry it all the time compared to my current bulky one.

Get an Apple MacBook in black when Apple removes the current $200 premium – hope Apple does that soon and before X-mas.

A cell phone that can sync with iSync and Outlook, something like the Sony Ericsson K750, which has all that but no rush – let the price drop.

Check out https://myswisstravelpass.com/