All You Need...

All you need to travel the world is a smart phone, a passport and a debit card. Could this be true?  I think that the passport is a given.  After all I can't imagine trying to enter a country without one. But why a smart phone?  I rarely need to talk to anyone in a foreign country, besides I probably wouldn't understand the language. Most phones will work in a foreign country if the proper card is installed. But it you're like me, talking is what I use my phone the least for. Now is the age of cell phone applications or what we once called programs. We have found many uses for our smartphones while traveling.  Once we used an audio guided tour of London we had down loaded from Rick Steves' website. Translate apps also work well to help you with the local language. At times you can use a number of apps together for a desired result. For example, while in a museum in Venice I found the descriptive labels on artifacts in Italian. I lack knowledge of the Italian except for "grazie".  But I used the scan to text application to get the Italian copy into my phone and the translate application to translate it into English. It's  a great way to translate restaurant menus too. Obviously, a currency converter application is always useful. You should be sure that you apps are downloaded to your phone and not on the cloud accessible only via WiFi.  Since most hotels in foreign countries now had WIFI it's easy to send email and catch up on social media. However, sometimes they can be unreliable and frequently require a user fee. I use my cellphone as a camera, currency converter, Google maps and a measure app.  With WiFi  I use it for editing photos for blog posts and social media. Needless to say we keep our friends at home updated via email.

Thirdly, a debit card or credit card is indispensable. Major cities around the world now have ATMs. As a general rule the exchange rates are better than airport rates and most banks.  Also most restaurants in major cities accept credit cards. We rarely carry much cash but have a debit card readily available.  However, there is one caveat. Be sure to notify your credit/debit card company that you will be traveling in a foreign country. If they notice that someone is making large withdrawals or charges in a foreign country they may freeze the account and not allow withdrawals or charges. This happened to us once with our debit card and we were forced to use a credit card instead. An interesting aside on credit cards. If you rent an automobile with a Visa card the credit card company insures the automobile. We had a minor fender bender is Nazare, Portugal, and the credit card company paid the claim.

As an afterthought, good old American greenbacks are recognized almost anywhere in the world.  Don't leave home without a few. And carry your smartphone, passport and debit card.

Two Men on a Fish

Venice is a marvelous city. Its canals are lined with exciting things to see and do. Like any city it has its "must see" attractions.  The Grand Canal, the Guggenheim Museum and Saint Mark's Cathedral are but a few. However, I find some of the lesser known places of interest very attractive. One such place is the Museo Storico Navale, the Italian Naval History Museum. It's easy to find, right off the lagoon beside the canal leading to the Venetian Arsenal  at Riva San Biagio 2148.  The building was a granary in the 15th century. The origin of the museum goes back to 1815 when the Austrians controlled the city.  They established the museum to house the tremendous collection of ship models produced by the Venetian Arsenal but officially established by the Italians in 1919. The collection was housed in its current location in 1958.  In its forty-two rooms the seafaring history of Venice comes alive.

Inside the building after paying our admission fee and receiving a brochure which had the layout of the museum we climbed the stairs and began our discovery of Italian naval history. Some of the first displays we saw were  that of a model ship collection which must have numbered well over one hundred. There were ships of all types, but predominantly those of the glory days of the Venetian navy when it ruled the waves.  The size of these models are from six inches to ten feet.  One of the most impressive needed 130 men to man the oars.  There are actual barges in excess of fifty feet long. The wealthy traveled by barge and those of lesser incomes traveled by watercraft as well.    Wheeled vehicles aren't allowed in Venice. These barges  used in the canals were extremely ornate. The decorative wood carvings were brightly painted or covered with gold-leaf. Gold leafing is the process of adhering extremely thin sheets of gold to a  surface such as wood.  These barges were floating works of art. One of the rooms in the museum is dedicated to the most famous of Venetian watercraft, the gondola.  With a gondola out of the water it is easy to notice the curved keel which allows the gondolier to propel the boat forward in a straight line with an oar on only one side. There were rooms with old cannon as well as modern machine guns. The bottom most floor had more modern naval displays. There were actual boats  used in the second world war for launching torpedoes and the control panel from a submarine.

As we wandered through these  modern machines of warfare, I suddenly grabbed Claudettes arm and shouted, "Hey, there's one!"

In one of the rooms was a large canister open on one end with a miniature submarine emerging from it. It can be debated whether it was a submarine or a manned torpedo. Italian scuba divers rode this underwater machine to an enemy ship and attached a warhead to the ship before escaping and detonating the warhead electrically. Although other Axis powers, mainly Japan, developed miniature submarines the Italians were the most successful in using them. Or at least according to the information posted at the display. Miniature submarines are almost a thing of fiction. But there right in front  of me was one. Claudette was not as excited as I was. After all it was a museum of naval history. I made a number of photographs of the little sub. Using my drawing application on my smartphone I drew two figures on the photo of the midget submarine. As we continued our discovery of the  Museo Storico Navale, we saw another miniature submarine.

As far as I'm concerned the Museo Storico Navale is a "must see" in Venice.

The operation of the miniature submarine.