the Grand Tour blog

iPhone power and images

Invested heavily in an Apple World Travel Adapter Kit, for charging the iPhone. But I'm now fairly certain I'm going to take it back: I find that Apple have recently (last month?) introduced a tiny continental power adapter – complementing the small UK plug with USB socket that came with the phone – which is exactly what I wanted all along. Unfortunately there is no way for me to buy one in the UK! I called the Apple Store who said that if I tried to buy from, say, Italy, I would need to have an Italian billing address. I will talk to my nearest physical store to see if they can get one for me, but I don't hold out much hope. Sent a comment to Apple Feedback suggesting things like this should be available through all the national stores. 

Scanned and adjusted maps for all my cities, to carry with me on the iPhone. Ended up with 18 files to which I will add the location of hotels, highlight the main attractions, and add anything else that may make it easier to get around. But after carefully sizing them to be a multiple of the iPhone's screen resolution (so they will zoom well), saving them as JPGs and transferring to the iPhone through iTunes, I find they are pretty poor quality when zooming in. Someone on the Apple forums pointed out that images are 'resized' to twice the screen size during copying, even if they're that size already. Pah! Clearly if they're line art they lose a lot in the process.

The trick is to copy them unmolested using a file-transfer app – I've now installed Files Lite, which has a good full-screen image viewer and is perfect for my maps. I already have DocumentsToGo, which I forgot can handle JPGs, but it leaves bars obscuring part of the image, and won't scroll diagonally. Files shows the image filename, which the iPhone photo viewer doesn't (tricky for maps because all the thumbnails look the same).

I hope it's all worth it; the transport unions seem quite keen on striking at the moment.

A Planning Admin week

A number of fiddly tasks this week to try to make sure I have the background information that will help make the trip run a bit more smoothly.

First, checked the timetables for all the Italian train journeys – including the regionals – and updated the train list with the most likely times for each journey, plus options either side. There are some significant fare increases since I last looked, and one reduction, but the increases are apparently due to significantly faster trains:

• Bologna-Florence: was 1h and €18.10, now 37mins and €24.00
• Florence-Rome: was 1:40 and €39.90, now 1:35 and €44.90 
• Rome-Pisa: was about 3h and €35.60, now 3:11 and €29.00
• Lucca-Venice: was 4:40 and €40.30, now 4:01 and €47.10 

Lucca-Venice is now a regional train to Florence, then an ES Italia AV to Venice. I think it used to be a regional train to Prato, then InterCity to Venice. I need to update the map. The time savings are useful.

Then, checked Orange's voice and data roaming charges, for keeping in touch with folks back home, and hopefully for blogging when I'm not in reach of WiFi:

• Call to UK:	38p/min + 19p setup
• Text message:	11p
• Photo message:	60p
• Data:	£3.00/MB

I can post here by email, but it's nicer to use the TypePad iPhone app. While away from WiFi I did a receive-and-reply email test which didn't shift the iPhone data usage at all (shown in increments of 0.1MB). So I don't think there should be a problem with emailing and blogging on 3G, provided I'm not tempted to use Safari or other data-heavy apps. For times when I do have WiFi, TypePad have i.typepad.com for mobile browers, though management of the blog is easier on a proper screen.

I had to set up a Help ticket with TypePad as there's a bug in both the iPhone app and in i.typepad.com, such that in both cases the text field for the post doesn't scroll properly (or at all in i.typepad.com). Later I got a noncommittal reply from TypePad support to say that they are "always looking for ways to enhance TypePad for users". Like fixing bugs? Also noting that the iPhone app is not in fact a front-end to email posting (which I'd thought it might be) but uses their own API. Which is OK.

Whether to call in to Busseto

In the course of checking my planned trains on the Trenitalia website, I see that trains from Cremona to Fidenza – en route to Bologna – stop halfway at the small town of Busseto, where Verdi came under Antonio Barezzi's patronage and taught (and later married) his daughter Margherita. I'd thought there was no station at Busseto and that I would be unable to visit, but I think I must have misspelt the name when searching before. If I finish early enough in Cremona it might be a worthwhile stop.

I doubt if there is left luggage at the station, so I would have to drag my case. From the air the station looks about 1km from the centre, so a 10 min+ walk each way. Looks attractive, but Casa Barezzi and Verdi's statue in the main square the main places of interest for me. It's not clear on any websites I've found whether visiting Casa Barezzi is by appointment or that appointments are required only for groups. 

The latest practical trains from Busseto to Bologna would be 16:57 (arr. 18:28) or 17:52 (arr. 19:28), although if I could eat in Busseto I could catch the later 18:47 (arr. 20:28). The afternoon trains from Cremona to Busseto are 14:05 (arr. 14:26) or 15:27 (arr. 15:49); the first would give me two and a half hours, the next only a little over an hour, before the 16:57 to Bologna. The 15:27 from Cremona would give me two hours in Busseto before the 17:52, which feels about right. 

I'm anxious not to cut Cremona short. I'm going slightly out of my way to get there, and if the violin museums are good I want to make the best of them – and of course enjoy the duomo, etc. But if I do feel I've seen all I want by early afternoon then calling in to Busseto is a good option.

Booked Cologne to London

Grabbed a Deutsche Bahn €49 London Spezial from Cologne to London. I'm not entirely convinced that Eurostar will recognise the home-printed online ticket, but I have to work on the assumption that DB know what they're doing. I'm now all booked from Verona to London. If everything runs on time I'll have almost two hours around the cathedral in Köln, plus finding some breakfast; then in London a tight 20 minutes to get to my train out of London at King's Cross. And I will have to find time to buy a ticket for the KX train – ouch!

Booked Italy to Germany

I'd thought that yesterday was the start of Deutsche Bahn's booking window for the beginning of the journey home from Verona, but the site wouldn’t let me book (I could book for the day before, and it's interesting that prices are €20 or so higher then, being a Sunday). I guessed there was a faint chance that with Teutonic efficiency DB might switch to allow booking from midnight – 11:00pm UK time – and so it was. But even a few minutes after booking opened all the really cheap fares were 'sold out'.

My seat (Verona-Munich) and overnight couchette (Munich-Cologne) were still the expected €89.00 total, a pretty good deal. Some confusion as the site said it couldn't make the reservation on Verona-Munich – "What do you want to do?". Well, I dunno. I have to guess the outcomes of the two options on offer: book only what they can reserve, or "book the entire journey without reservation". So I booked without, which as expected reserved my couchette but not a seat on the first train.

Called the UK booking number this morning, where the operator (who I think was probably sitting in Germany) was surprised that I could book the sleeper on-line, but said not to worry about Verona-Munich. It's a EuroCity train and reservation is not compulsory – but I ought to be able to reserve at the ticket office in Milan anyway, or at any other Italian station. I hope so: I don’t fancy standing for 5.5 hours.

Wondering at what time I want the next train – from Cologne to Brussels – I had another look at the entry for Cologne Cathedral [the Dom] in the Rough Guide. It's rewritten and much improved in my new [June 2009] edition, and I'm pleased to see that the Dom opens at 6:00am; I’m due to arrive at the Hauptbahnhof next door at 5:40. Also that its construction was triggered by the arrival of the relics of the Three Magi from Milan – taken by Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick Barbarossa and given to the Archbishop of Cologne, Rainald von Dassel, in 1164 – a neat closure of my tour, which starts (if you've been following) in Milan.

Pound-Euro prediction required

I'm now reaching the point where I need to buy some euros for the Tour. But the value of the pound against the euro continues to wobble, mostly in a downward direction. So I thought it might be interesting to look back over the last couple of years, to the heady days of €1.26/£ before my first Grand Tour; it seems I was lucky then, though it's just too depressing to extend the graph back to the beginning of 2007 when it was €1.50/£.  

The big question is: will the pound continue to fall to its level at the beginning of this year, or will it recover to what we must now think of as a good rate of 1.15? Answers on a holiday postcard please.

[Source data for my graph from Stock Charts, visually smoothed for clarity]

Booked Eurostar out

Two days ago I checked Eurostar for my outward travel day and booked the 09:32, which arrives in Paris at 12:47, since my (booked) onward train to Milan is now later than originally planned – maybe I’ll get breakfast in the hotel after all. Eurostar have no return pricing that would justify the extra time travelling to Paris on the way home. Interesting to note that the 2h15m journey costs almost the same as the 7h journey from Paris to Milan, first class.

Was in London last night for a concert so called in to St Pancras and collected my ticket from the machine. 

I lost a train?

In the course of updating the Grand Tour map, I had a major panic attack when I went on the Trenitalia website to check the exact route of the Verona-Munich train and found that the 15:05 I planned to catch seemed to have been discontinued, with only a 1:00am departure. After weighing the limited number of rather unsatisfactory options – since the hotels are effectively immovable – I had a calmer look at the Deutsche Bahn offering for the same route, which shows the 15:05 after all; perhaps that’s where I saw it originally. Phew! 

The more I think about it the more I like the planned end of the tour: a final full day in Vicenza, half a day in Verona, then a late afternoon train ride up to the Brenner Pass, reaching the high point at perhaps 5:00pm before a scenic descent to Munich. Well, it’ll be good if the sun shines.

Playing further on the superb English language DB website (which increasingly puts the abysmal British train websites to shame) I find that booking Verona-Cologne as one journey can save €29 (24%) on the current special-offer single-journey seats. DB also have an excellent Cologne-London offer at €49, including Eurostar via Brussels. No ticket changes of course, so it could be risky. But it might make the Eurostar Paris-or-Brussels decision for me, for the return journey.

Which train next?

Called in to Eurostar in St Pancras on the way through yesterday, to ask about returns: how far apart can the out and return journeys be? The original Eurostar ticket office has closed, and we are redirected to a new place opposite the check-in gates. Which turns out to be ticket machines only; no people, apart from a polite but unsmiling lady with a ‘continental’ accent, guarding the entrance space, who told me that the return journey can be booked as far ahead as the booking system will allow, i.e. normally up to three months. The return part of the expensive changeable tickets can be shifted progressively later. 

Naturally the St Pancras signage has not been updated to reflect the ‘booking office’ move. 

I’m trying to decide which trains to book next. The one with no workaround is the sleeper from Munich to Cologne, so I guess that’s priority. Then Verona to Munich to allow it to happen. After that I need to nail down the Eurostars, which means I must decide whether to return via Brussels, or add an extra two hours or so to the journey time and come back via Paris; Paris not very logical, looking at the map (it’s more than twice the distance from Cologne), but worth the effort if I can get a better ticket or lower price by buying a return. The Cologne-Paris Thalys price would be higher than to Brussels, of course. 

First train booked

Had a look at the Paris-Milan train on tgv.co.uk as we‘re now within the 90-day booking window. The 13:50 which I’d planned to book is no longer running. Instead there is a 15:24, which is half an hour faster, arriving in Milan an hour later than I originally planned at 22:25. Just as well I checked. Should be OK provided the hotel doesn’t give up on me; perhaps I should email nearer the time. Spent much time looking at other sites listing the TGV-Artesia trains, several of whom were still listing the 13:50, as well as, in one case, a 14:24 and a 15:50, just to confuse people (there never have been that many direct trains); however when I started a dummy booking on one of them it changed to 15:24. 

So I went ahead and booked. More time spent trying to decide if it’s worth booking a changeable and refundable ticket. In the end, since it cost quite a bit more and I only get 50% back if I change or cancel, I took a chance on a fixed ticket – I hope I don’t regret it. The only issue is whether the better ticket would have any priority on available seats if I had to change; I doubt it. But I did book first class, for an extra £18.50. I reckon a wider solo seat, bigger table and guaranteed power point will be worth having on the 7-hour journey.

The later departure will allow me to catch a Eurostar at a more reasonable time, and maybe even grab some breakfast in the hotel before I leave. And/or spend a bit more time in Paris between Gare du Nord and Gare de Lyon.