Travel the world -1
Training from Amsterdam to Brussels, Cheaper (and cleaner) than Amtrak. Wonderfully fast Internet.
Why bother with cell service here, when Wi-Fi is ubiquitous? Do not pay Verizon $10 a day. Switch to Mint Mobile (aka T-Mobile) for great, cheap service.
Travel the world -2
Everyone and their uncle, their wives, their children and their grandchildren are fixated on their iPhones. On the Mediterranean in Crete, Greece:
An on the train to Brussels. Gorgeous blonde, named Mikayla:
From airports to restaurants to Crete beaches there’s clearly never been a product as dominant as Apple — except Google and iPhone’s phoning app — WhatsApp — owned by guess who? Meta.
For travel companions, there are two engrossings: Meta’s Instagram and Amazon’s Kindle. Both are perfect for my iPhone 16 Pro — shortly to be upgraded to the iPhone 17 Pro, which, I read, is outselling the iPhone 16. The 17 is perfect for grandchildren photos.
Hence, I’d be stupid to ever think of selling my Apple, my Google, and my Meta. Also my Amazon, Broadcom, GE Vernova, Nvidia, Oklo and Oracle.
Travel the world -3
The best travel shoe is the Cloud 6 by ON (Roger’s Federer’s company).
The shoes and the stock are on sale. Buy the shoes, not the stock.
Travel the world -4
Read Dan Brown (or whoever) on Kindle or iPhone. You’ll be engrossed. You won’t freak out that JetBlue took 2 1/2 hours to deliver my tiny little bag to the remotest baggage claim area of Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. JetBlue executive bitch: “Because we’re offering cheaper service from the U.S. to Holland than KLM, the Dutch treat us poorly.” Sour grapes.
The moral: Never check bags. Never ever. Fit your junk into a backpack and a roll-on. Leave stuff at home. You don’t need half of what you have in your bag. Trust me. I’m returning with unused shirts, shorts and socks. If desperate, carry a bigger backpack.
Travel Tips (Continued)
+ Do not buy an iPhone case that has a pouch on the back for credit cards. The mechanism breaks. The credit cards fall out. Gone. Trust me. Family experience on this one.
+ You can pay with the iPhone everywhere and anywhere. You don’t need cash or credit cards anywhere in Europe. Except for taxis. But not for restaurants or shops
+ You can plug your tiny little USB-C adapter into your iPhone, your laptop and your Apple Watch. I charge them all with this one $35 adapter.
To buy it, click here. Sadly I don’t get a commission from all my Amazon recommendations.
+ “Your amazon prime credit card is no longer valid. Please update it.” That was the email I received. It was a scam. But a clever one. I almost fell for it until …. I looked at the sender’s email address. Oh, yes, I haven’t paid my Norton $500 bill. Or the Best Buy subscription. Or other things I owe hundreds of dollars on things I haven’t bought and don’t want.
+ Unless you’re desperate don’t buy an Apple Macbook until they introduce one with a non-reflective, touch screen, Which, for some inexplicable reason, they don’t make at present. In conrast my Lenova X1 Carbon ThinkPad (which I love) has an incredibily useful non-reflective, touch screen.
+ Airlines will not alert you to your passport expiring — even though your passport is in their system and they will stop you from traveling to some places — after you’ve arrived at the airport. If your passport expires six months from when you first think of traveling you need a new passport. Check now.
+ Do not let your TSAPre and Global Entry expire. I did. I re-applied…. and now our government is shut down. What a dumb fool — me.
+ www.trustedhousesitters.com is absolutely wonderful. They’ll find you nice people to take care of your house and your dog while you go swaning off to some exotic paradise. My son has used them many times and has tip-top experience with them.
Dan Brown’s engrossing best seller
I finished it. All 688 pages. t’s a good read. It has action. Which keeps you gripped. You learn interesting stuff. Which isn’t useful but is interesting.
You emerge happy that the CIA is on your side. And we’ll all muddle through today’s difficult world.
Was it worth my 30 hours? As entertainment in taxis , airports and on planes , it can’t be beat. Dan Brown knows how to rivet you and Amazon’s kindle software (on my iPhone) makes the going painless.
The last time I reviewed a book was in college sixty years ago.
For more, read the review from the New York Times. r. Click Book Review_ ‘The Secret of Secrets”
Most loved idiocies
I catch a JetBlue tomorrow from Amsterdam to Boston. If I’m forced to check a bag, I’m praying I won’t have to wait 2 1/2 hours.
Amsterdam houses are narrow because they once taxed them based on how wide they were. That led to seriously narrow staircases and, wait for this, some houses leaning forward — so they could lift furniture up outside without destroying windows, which, of course, popped out on demand. The Dutch are, if anything, ultra-resourceful.
Grandson, Peter, 9, loves the crazy funnies on Instagram. We’re soulmates.
They (the gurus and talking TV heads) continue to predict doom and gloom for the economy and the stock market. One day they’ll be right. For now, we continue to have magnificent days like Friday.
I remain fully invested. But I monitor what I own as carefully as I can for a portfolio as large as mine. And I dump stocks whose companies go awry — whatever that means. The list of what I own is in the right hand column on the web site.
See you shortly. — Harry Newton
