A cotton sarong is an essential piece of travel equipment. The sarong can convert to a light weight sheet on a hot night, become an emergency towel for that unexpected river swim or when your airbnb runs short, and get used as a cover up if staying in a guesthouse with shared bathrooms or a long walk to the pool. Cotton sarongs dry quicker and take up less space than towels of equivalent size. Always travel with a sarong.

The reality is that your drink bottle will get left behind on a train, plane, cafe table, or may be in a changing room cubicle.

If you lose your re-usable drink bottle you’ll probably be miffed, and it will most likely end up exactly where you didn’t want it - in the bin.

Plastic is bad for the environment, but it’s not so bad if you reuse that store bought plastic water bottle many times - up until the point you accidentally lose it.

You’ll also find that some art galleries won’t let you take in water bottles, so being able to part with yours quickly will be a blessing.

So leave the expensive re-usable bottles at home.

And sunglasses - save stress and refuse to pay more than you are prepared to lose. There are plenty of sellers in Europe that will fit you out for 10-20 euro.

There are lots of third party sellers of tickets in Europe now with clever tricks to get a few extra dollars out of you. I recommend always finding the official website for the place you want to see and finding out from that how to book tickets.

For instance, google “Acropolis official website”. If you just google “Acropolis” you’ll end up at a site that looks official but isn’t the actual official site.

And don’t google “official tickets”. Lot’s of resellers will claim to have official tickets, and they might, but that doesn’t make them the official website or the official seller - and you will be paying their mark up.

Occasionally, if you have not booked far enough ahead, you might find you can no longer get tickets through the official channels and you do have to delve into the world of resellers. Tread knowingly and carefully…..

Popular European tourist sites are trying all sorts of things now to make it difficult for unauthorised 3rd party resellers to profit from them. In some cases, they do this by having a short forward window for pre-bookings, or staggering ticket releases. The goal is to make it harder for 3rd parties to buy up tickets and sell them at a higher price, or as part of “tours” that are of low quality.

Two examples are the Paris Catacombs, where you can only buy tickets about a week in advance. And to my mistake, the Colosseum, which sells tickets only about a month in advance (but they do go as soon as they are released).

If the official site does not have tickets available, check the fine print to see when they release them.

PS - for many sites now you will need your passport number to book, and will need to show this (as well as your ticket) when you visit. This is to prevent reselling.

In-house tours are the ones run by the venue themselves, through the official website. They might view them as “Events” and only happen a few times a week, and therefore not appear on the ticket sales page.

The venue likely offers them at cost, and won’t have the marketing budget (or need) to compete with all the third or fourth party tours that will pop up in your Google search.

Despite parts of our trip to Europe being booked at short notice, I was still able to get tickets for several great in-house tours. The best was perhaps the Louvre - which I bought a few weeks out via their events page. The tour was led by an English speaking member of staff whose passion for the museum shone through. I was able do the same at the Prado in Madrid.

In most cases the tour was a modest extra fee booked separately from the entry ticket. If you are buying timed entry tickets you need to make sure you will be in the museum before the tour begins.

My advice: check for tours and other “events” that are on at the places you want to visit before you book your tickets.

No affiliate links or benefit for me in saying this!

I book based on value for money, and I’ll compare across multiple platforms. However, I have become a Booking.com Genius Level 3 customer. Genius is their rewards system and status depends on the number of completed bookings (not dollar value or number of nights).

Now I’ve attained that level, it tells me I have it for life. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the discounts I’m getting. Sometimes 20% and occasionally more, including on car rentals. I still compare sites, and the price to book direct with the provider. But it seems to be worth having.

Tip: if your are travelling with someone else, do all your booking.com bookings through one person’s account, so the nights stayed adds up faster.

Your phone is your most necessary piece of travel equipment. It’s your map, camera, transport guide, and often credit card. You need to keep it operational at all times.

Some accommodation in Europe now uses your phone as the key to enter and exit the property - a bit like when you use the wallet function to pay on a credit card loaded in your phone wallet. If your phone runs out of battery you can’t get into your accommodation.

While there are some innovative charging stations in some cities (like Lisbon has chargers you can use while waiting for the subway), they are not always readily available.

I realised during this trip that I would be worse off if I lost my phone than my wallet or passport (touch wood neither happens).

Reduce anxiety about dropping your phone over cliffs when taking photos, or losing it in many other ways, by getting a phone bracelet that goes around your wrist.

Phone snatching is also a real issue in Europe, and a crime wave in London. A phone bracelet will discourage thieves and make it harder for them to nab yours.

You can buy phone bracelets with universal tethers, that should let the bracelet fit your existing phone case.