From Here to There

April 1, 2016. My first full day in Spain and its been a technology nightmare. Thank God I hadn’t planned on doing much, other than sleep (which I didn’t get to do).

When I tried to activate my EU SIM card , I found out my old carrier (from 2+ years ago) never really unlocked my phone, so I can’t use the EU SIM. Bought a cheap (Android) phone at the Spanish version of WalMart but of course none of my travel apps are on it. At the Apple store here, part of the troubleshooting process included resetting the iPhone and now I can’t use it at all – I can’t do two-factor authentcation since my iPad is back in CA.  #&%%#!%#

I also Completely forgot about the 220  volt thing in Europe so immediately “fried” the 110 volt power supply on the cheap tablet I brought with me for writing blog posts and uploading photos. So, I also  bought a cheap tablet to replace it, but forgot to get one with a USB port (my excuse is  my lingering state of exhaustion) so now photo uploads will be limited to whatevet  can take and email from the cheap phone to myself and then upload from there. And drafting posts on an unfamiliar and much smaller keypad is going to mean lots of typos. Thank God for auto-complete.

I now don’t have my travel books (hoping I can download to the new tablet but won’t bet on it); Rick Steves will be disappointed he’s not coming on this journey with me after all.

I’m upset with myself for allowing so much planning and prep to go down the drain, but I will pull myself together to start my “real” sightseeing tomorrow in Granada, and will try to make the most of it with very limited connectivity.  Hopefully I won’t get lost on the way without my GPS app to guide me.

Stay tuned!