Travel planning – capturing the moment

In reviewing the pictures from our two previous trips one thing stands out and that’s the fact that there’s simply too few pictures of Cynthia and I together.

Sure, she has her camera and I have my camera so we’ve got some pictures of each other, but the thought of handing hundreds of dollars worth of technology to a complete stranger causes one to pause. For the sake of a romantic shot of the two of us in front of (insert cool landmark here) we are risking them dropping, or even worse, stealing the camera.

And holding a full SLR at arms length doesn’t work very well either.

Then I had a brainstorm.

I came up with the idea of purchasing a used and inexpensive point and shoot camera. The idea being that it’s something that can easily be held at arm’s length so we can get the self portraits of ourselves and it’s cheap enough so that if we do decide to let someone take our picture and they drop it or run away we’re not out that much.

It occurred to me that the secondary camera market must be huge and that by being willing to sacrifice a few mega-pixels and some features, a few year old used point and shoot digital camera should be pretty inexpensive and readily available.

We headed over to The Camera Exchange and I was able to pick up a used Nikon Coolpix 4100 with a 1 gig memory card for a song (as in well under a $100 song)!

I’m sure I could have gotten even cheaper on Ebay or from Craigslist or even the Chronicle Classifieds but this was better for me as I like to put my hands on technology before I buy it, even if it’s cheap cheap cheap.

The camera weighs next to nothing, runs on AA batteries so there’s no charger which makes it a breeze to transport. 4 mega-pixels, 3X zoom, super easy to use.

It’s PERFECT!

Travel planning – Barcelona hotel and bonus air fair

We finally found a hotel in Barcelona we like.

The Hotel Pulitzer is a bit pricier than we originally wanted, but it’s well situated in the city center and within spitting distance of the Placa de Catalunya.

The reviews at Trip Advisor give it an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5. It was also the winner of the 2006 Trip Advisor Traveller’s Choice Award.

Even with it’s designer price-tag, we’re still in under budget for hotel accommodations for the entire trip so we went ahead and booked it for the 8 nights we’ll be there.

That’s the last of the hotels for the trip. Yay!

We also booked the flight that will take us from Granada to Barcelona. This is bugging me a little because the carry on restrictions are very tight in Europe. It’s 10kg (22 lbs) and that’s not per bag, that total per person. My camera gear comes in at 4 lbs alone so I may have to check my backpack which fills me with dread thinking it could get lost or stolen at the Barcelona airport.

If I end up having to check the backpack I will remove a few items and add them to my carry on and just hope for the best knowing that Barcelona is a big enough city to allow me resupply if the need arises.

I also found some great shirts for the trip. 100% silk and very wrinkle resistant. In terms of clothing I think I am all set.

The next phase of planning is the Eurail pass. We need to go over the options and see what we need and then purchase them online. That will probably be next weekend.

Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat

As Cynthia and I were pulling into the driveway yesterday after work, we noticed a dead squirrel in the road right in front of our house. Had it been next door or down the street I probably would not have given it too much thought, but since it was smack dab in front of our place I felt it prudent to dispose of the corpse.

I collected a shovel and a trash bag and proceeded to bag it up and then put the bag with the trash on the side of the house.

This morning I noticed he bag was gone. A cursory search and I found it on the other side of the driveway, up against the garage.

It was empty.

Now there’s either something roaming our neighborhood that is hungry enough to eat roadkill and skilled enough to sniff it out of and remove it from a Glad trash bag or there’s a really pissed off, undead squirrel living in our little corner of suburbia.

It’s hard enough keeping normal squirrels out of the bird feeders.
What chance do we have against the undead?

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