So your bags are packed and you’re ready to go to one of the biggest cities in the world, be it Madrid, Paris, Vegas, Macau, New York. Excitement is running through your veins thinking at all the sites to see, people to meet and off course nights to enjoy! No traveller to these cities will want to miss what the night has to offer ? clubs and off course casinos. Even if you are not a WSoP poker professional, trying your hand in the game will be an adventure on its own.

Poker is not only for the pros, it can be a fun, thrilling game even newbie’s like yourself can enjoy. Who knows? You might even walk away with some winnings! OK, before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s go through a quick list of some do’s and don’ts in these high class casinos.

Lisbon casino creative commons

First on the ‘to do’ list is analyze the games and learn their basic strategies. This isn’t one of those arcade games that doesn’t require much thinking and remember, you will be betting money so better know what you are doing. This learning should obviously be done before entering the casino. You can even try a lesson or two to make sure you really understand. Finding yourself at a table of experts who will gladly take your money is not a fun experience at all.

Another thing to remember is when it comes to stacking chips; make sure to stack the higher dominations at the bottom of the stack. This way, if someone grabs a few from the top and walks away, they will have taken chips with little or no value.

The list of don’ts is a longer one and on top of this list is to be careful with your actions. Yes, we understand it may be your first time and you are all excited and perhaps even a little tipsy but for your own sake, do not do anything that you don’t want caught on camera. Casinos are known to be full of hidden cameras waiting to capture cheaters.

Poker table creative commons

If you do not already know this, laptops, books and maybe even more are not allowed at the tables. In fact even purses or pieces of paper can get you into trouble since they may contain information to help you with the game.

Lastly, just because the casino is loaded with cameras and security personnel doesn’t mean you can be careless with your belongings. These places are also usually very crowded making it impossible to eradicate all possibilities of theft.

There you have it ? whether you find yourself sucking at the game or winning, you will never really know unless you try and what better place to try than in a foreign city with nobody watching you?

Gris’s Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, 1912

In the unending and unmeasurable and, probably, unjustifiable race to have the most absurdly expensive collection of coloured canvas hanging in the same place the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) has taken a sudden and substantial lead in the form of a billion dollar gift of representative cubist art from the billionaire philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard Lauder.

And it’s spectacular. Whether or not 78 paintings from the previous century can actually be “worth” a billion dollars is a debate for lawyers and insurance brokers and no doubt the internal revenue service who may be a little vexed at Lauder’s charitable deductions for fiscal year 2013. But for those of us for whom cubism is at its root simply nice to look at (among whom the estimable Mr. Lauder is apparently counted) this is a significant wrinkle in the process of deciding where to go next — Paris and the Pompidou, Chicago and the Art Institute, St Petersburg and the Hermitage or, in 2014 when the full collection goes on display, New York and the Met.

Picasso’s Woman in an Armchair (Eva), 1913

The inventory is 33 works by Picasso, 17 by Georges Braque, 14 by Juan Gris, and 14 by Fernand Léger and in addition to being worth an obscene amount of money they’re highly representative of a watershed period in modern art. I’d be particularly anxious to see that many Juan Gris in one place — he died young and left relatively few cubist examples compared to the prolific Picasso and that which exists is spread thin, but even more so than his contemporaries when you’re looking at cubist ephemera like posters or the credits at the beginning of Poirot or a Dubonnet ad, you’re looking at something derivative of Gris and it would be an unrivaled pleasure to see 14 essential pieces in one place.

Among them is Portrait of the Artist’s Mother which convincingly demonstrates Gris’ partiality to the geometry that became inseparable from the populist manifestations of the movement.

Braque’s Fruit Dish and Glass, 1912

Also in the collection which was assembled over forty years of disciplined concentration on a few select artists and Cubism is Picasso’s portrait of his mistress, Eva Gouel, regarded as his most radical and erotic work.

The Cubist movement incorporated non-traditional materials which, at the time, meant anything that wasn’t paint and canvas, and Braque’s Fruit Dish and Glass apparently was the first of papier collé and so it’s very very important and, obviously, expensive. I just think it’s beautiful and I really want to see it in real life.

Lauder has said that he knew that this unprecedented gift would be transformative and he chose the Met carefully, although he lives in New York and it seems the obvious choice. In any case it absolutely is transformative and has taken the Metropolitan Museum of Art from being the single most important art museum in the United States to the possibly the single most important in the world.

“The world is a book”, the philosopher Saint Augustine once famously said, “and those who do not travel only read a page”. Whether embarking on a fortnight, month or year of travel, the experience will undoubtedly change your life, almost certainly for the better. And if you are spending time volunteering, the experience will be all the richer if you do it abroad.

Atop Sharp Top Mountain by L. Richard Martin, Jr. (creative commons)

Experience new cultures

You could spend an entire lifetime hunched in front of Wikipedia learning about the cultures of the world, but until you’ve experienced it first-hand, you have only reached the tip of the iceberg. Diving into the deep end of a new and unusual culture is a thrilling adventure: challenging but wildly gratifying.

You could spend some time soaking yourself in a country’s history and heritage. Gorge yourself on the local cuisine and become a food connoisseur of unique delicacies and trends. Or simply get to know the people and see how differently others live. Their outlook on life might offer you a whole new perspective of your own.

Helping others

There is a profound sense of achievement that comes with volunteering. Instead of simply indulging yourself in a luxurious beach holiday, volunteering gives the sense that you have contributed some essential good to human society, and does wonders for your self-esteem.

There are volunteer programmes in virtually every corner of the globe, and countries everywhere are grateful and welcoming for friendly, energetic volunteers to assist in practically every field of work. Whether you want to do conservation, construction or voluntary teaching abroad with children there are a number of programmes for everyone.

Volunteering abroad by The Dilly Lama (creative commons)

Learn a new language

There are countless advantages to studying a second language, including improved cognitive and literacy skills, greater understanding of a culture and increased employment opportunities. There is no better way to learn a new language than in the country where it is natively spoken. By immersing yourself in a foreign language and its culture you can pick up a vocabulary faster and more accurately than any classroom could teach you. And you will have earned a skill for life, providing a handy reason for return visits in future years.

Remind yourself how lucky you are

Many people who have done voluntary work with organisations like Projects Abroad in more vulnerable parts of the world have spoken of how the experience dramatically affected their perspective on life and the world. Living in the West, where healthcare and running water are taken for granted, it is easy to forget how fortunate our lives are; being confronted with extreme poverty teaches an important lesson in humility and provides a singular vantage point on the world. It can also make you appreciate your own native land, making your return home that extra bit sp

There’s absolutely no excuse for any travel blog to be adding to the self-replicating list of packing essentials. But when I saw this while shamelessly looking for ideas to steal I knew it was time for a voice of reason to finally bring a stop to the madness.

Bring some clothes, your passport and a way of getting to your money. There, you’re done. Don’t even bring a book — pick one up along the way and give it away when you’re done reading it. If you’ve got a lot of paper tickets and reservations and boarding passes then presumably someone printed out this article for you because in the age of the internet there’s no excuse for any of that. Few destinations can’t be reached these days without e-tickets and print-at-will boarding passes and if you just need reminders then by all means have one, single sheet in your back pocket but make sure it’s accessible in the cloud, too, because no vacation should be at risk because you lost a piece of paper or all your luggage or anything at all. In fact, scan your passport and your credit cards and put them in the cloud, too, and you can be stripped naked and left for dead under bridge and, assuming you don’t actually die, if you can get online and/or to your embassy you can get your stuff back and you’ll lose maybe a day (depending on how you wound up naked under a bridge, possibly two days).

That’s the most offensive thing about these helpful lists of essentials — well-intentioned or not the effect is to instill fear. What if you lose a button and you haven’t packed a miniature sewing kit? What if you have to sponge-bath in an airport toilet and you haven’t brought any hand soap? Well obviously in either of these cases you’ll have to turn around and head home and prepare a little better next year.

Sleepwear? In 2013? Who wears jammies in 2013? I suppose if you’re on a shooting weekend at the country estate of your uncle, the Duke of Elmsworth, in turn of the previous century England, then by all means have your man pack your flannel dressing gown. Otherwise I suggest you practice in advance to enure yourself to the risk that someone might see you in your underwear.

Money belts are itchy, sweaty, uncomfortable and above all useless artifacts from a thankfully dead era they shared with travelers’ checks and charter flights. Put your passport in your breast pocket, secured with a button, and your wallet in the other breast pocket, secured with another button. Everything else should be digital and if it’s not then for Christ’s sake stop using a “travel agency” — they belong in the past with money belts. Airport security is already pointlessly and absurdly time-consuming, you don’t want to be the one to hold up a line while you get half-naked so you can show your passport.

Clothes line, laundry detergent, hair dryer, spot remover, flashlight and first aid kit are just a few of the altogether pointless items that inevitably turn up on lists compiled by those who’ve failed to make the important distinction between that which you must pack and that which you can pack. Don’t pack anything because you might need it. Don’t pack anything that you can acquire just as or more easily at your destination. Never select what to pack motivated by fear.

I’m of the school that says you should assume that everything’s going to go well and pack accordingly. If things don’t go well, respond to this at the time, and be physically and psychically prepared to do so because you packed the only real essential — the right attitude.

 Suitcase photo from Cea.’s photostream

While most travelers are equal to the task of booking flights and reserving hotels and packing and remembering their documentation and navigating foreign cities and customs and toilets, many of us are stymied by the tremendous complexity of deciding where to go. Countless vacations are ruined before they start by this vexing issue.

As with so many other problems, this has now been solved by the clever application of technology. Startup website getgoing.com proposes a complex algorythm which randomly selects between two destinations, for that niche market of travelers equal to all the other challenges of travel but find flipping a coin a bridge too far.

The website, which is very nice looking and easy to use and hence has two positive things that can be said about it, proposes a selection of starting points and destinations or experiences. The starting point can be any international airport in the world, provided it’s in the United States, and the destinations are a broad selection of eccentric, off-the-beaten track adventures like Paris, London and exotic Rome. The user selects between two offers and then commits to purchasing one of them, including providing credit card information, before Getgoing randomly chooses on the client’s behalf. The tickets are non-refundable, non-transferable and non-changeable.

To be fair, the prices that Getgoing claims to have negotiated with the leading airlines appear to be quite competitive, and an entirely unscientific comparison shows them to be only slightly worse that what you can get from Expedia.

If you’re really having a hard time deciding where to spend your precious vacation time, Getgoing may well be able to help. If you don’t want to commit to a non-refundable, non-guaranteed price which isn’t as good as that which you can get from Expedia, here are some alternatives to Getgoing:
— Travel with someone more decisive than you are. In fact, you should probably do that anyway. Two people so precious they can’t decide where to go on vacation run the risk of starving to death while deciding where to eat. If you’re experiencing life’s great journey alone maybe it’s because you’re so indecisive and you’re going to have to change that sooner or later, you might just as well decide to start now.
— Stick a pin in a map or flip your own coin. Load Wikitravel and click on “random page” (I just got Transylvania). Go to the airport with a wad of cash and say to the lady at the ticket desk “get me on the next flight out of the country” while looking furtively about for an assassin in the crowd.
— Don’t go. Stay at work and postpone your vacation until there’s somewhere you want to go. Ask your friends — many of them will have traveled and found the experience rewarding. Over time one such experience will strike you as something you’d like to do and if that never happens then you’re not a traveler, spend the money on something you do like, if you can decide what that is.

So on balance out of five stars I’m going to have to give Getgoing a WTF. I have no idea who the audience is nor why anyone would use this site when there are cheaper, more reliable and appreciably more random options available.

As we established last week, prices advertised by the discount airlines are wholly unrelated to what you’re eventually going to pay. It’s not even a guideline. It’s not an approximation. It’s more of a placeholder, a proxy variable for the real price you’re paying once you and your chosen tormentor have completed the nuanced ritual of booking, boarding, and being where you want to be.

You’re definitely paying more than the advertised price. Read the previous installment to know why or just take my word for it. Even if the flight were free the advertised price doesn’t include taxes, so dismiss from your mind entirely the idea that you’re going from London to Nice for £18. You’re not. But you can still fly relatively cheaply if you’re flexible about when you fly and where you actually land and if you follow a few simple guidelines:

Don’t buy any luggage or insurance and don’t rent any cars

While booking you’ll be offered an array of other magnificent offers that you can combine to make your trip more expensive, the most hilariously ironic of which is probably branded luggage. If you were to buy a suitcase while booking you won’t be reminded that you’re also going to need to buy it some space on the plane or pay a penalty which almost certainly exceeds the cost of your ticket. More pointedly, though, as much as this inventory of tricks and traps should help you, it’s a near certitude that after your experience with a discount airline you’re not going to be of a mind to be seen with luggage with their logo on it.
You’ll also be automatically subscribed to flight insurance and you’ll have to carefully deselect that option and bravely ignore the dire warning that pops up when you do. Of course the insurance is a scam and the efforts you’ll have to make to be compensated if you miss your flight because of a medical emergency or earthquake or because you died will only be worth it if you happen to be both unemployed and a qualified contracts attorney.
You’ll also be directed to rent a car and book a hotel. Do neither. Renting a car is a mug’s game at the best of times and, it’s just occurred to me, worthy of a fear-mongering article of its own, and you obviously shouldn’t have to be warned about booking hotels from people who are actively trying to rob you with an insurance scam.

Follow the insane rules to the letter

The online booking process can seem incidentally arcane but it isn’t — it’s deliberately arcane. Every detail that you enter and every detail that you forget to enter will cost you money and that’s entirely intentional. Provide your name and birth date exactly as they appear on your passport and of course don’t get your passport number wrong. When you go to the airport have not only your passport with you but the credit card you booked with. If you use your middle initial instead of your full middle name it might go unnoticed but probably won’t and there’s every chance that you’ll have to buy a new ticket for the passenger who has your name, birth date and passport number.
You’ll probably have to pay a fee for the convenience of preboarding. Preboarding usually means returning to the web site between 24 and 48 hours before departure to get an assigned seat. This is, in fact, not a convenience at all. This is another opportunity to screw up and put another win in the vendor’s column. You cannot preboard earlier than 48 hours and if you leave it to later than 24 then you’re going to have to pay the in-person boarding charge at the airport and, of course, forfeit your preboarding fee. Incidentally that last bit is, technically, illegal, so to reclaim your preboarding fee see the above notes about claiming insurance compensation.

Don’t buy anything on the plane

But especially, as a matter of principle, liquids. Discount flights are typically short journeys from one airport that’s not even close to where you are to another airport not even close to where you want to go, so drink plenty of liquids just before having all of them taken away from you by the “security” “professionals” at the airport. Onboard toilets are, for the moment, free. But discount airlines know how to work a captive audience and they’ll try to sell you water, lottery tickets, amazingly shit coffee (which will make you thirsty) and damp sandwiches. Try to resist the temptation.
On the other hand, go ahead and buy your bus passes on the plane. The shuttle buses from the freight airport 80km from your desired destination are typically run by the airline so the price doesn’t get any better on the ground.

Discard luggage, acquire layers

Checked luggage is, obviously, expensive. Regular airlines will typically allow you some leeway but many discount airlines offer their check in staff bonuses for disallowing hand luggage and, consequently, levying an absurd checked baggage fee. Avoid this by carrying a flexible bag something between a disco purse and a wallet. There’s absolutely nothing they can do, apart from judging you harshly, if you choose to board wearing three shirts and two pairs of trousers with socks and underwear stuffed in your pockets.

Take the high road

In spite of what I say above, be courteous. Partially so that should a conflict arise you can at least, after you lose, know that you were in the right. But mainly because you might just as well be civil. They don’t care about your threats to never fly their crappy airline again or to tell all your friends or write the papers or put your lawyer onto them. They’ve heard it all and worse before and it won’t work.

So stay calm and have the confidence that you’ve done everything right and if they get you then they get you but if you travel with a positive attitude then it won’t matter — you traveled.

Cruise holidays provide lots of activities and entertainment but sometimes it’s just nice to slip away and have some personal leisure time. This time could be used to call family or friends, check the net, read or just browse online. Most companies and ships like cruises on the dawn princess provide you with the technologies you need but it’s always nice to have your own. The following article lists some must-have gadgets in general that will provide hours of entertainment.

iPhone or Smartphone

Most people can’t imagine being without their phone these. Everyone either has an iPhone or a smartphone, the most popular smartphone at the moment being the Samsung Galaxy III. It has a large 12 cm screen and the display takes full advantage of this with brilliant colour and graphics. It is loaded with features; Every Touch function lets two Galaxy S III phones transfer photos, videos and documents just by placing them back to back. It has a replaceable battery and more memory, 128 GB. The Galaxy has been said to be as good, if not better, as the iPhone 5. Whichever one you own you will be guaranteed hours of enteratianment, so why wouldn’t you bring it along? It can also double as a camera, save room when packing.

Gaming

You can game on your phone but there still isn’t the same quality or complexity provided with phone apps. PlayStation released a new gaming device last year, the PS Vita. It has a vivid 13 cm screen. The graphics have been raved about by the majority of customers. The touch screen, rear touch pad, dual analogue thumb sticks and 6-axis motion sensor make the Vita incredibly responsive. There are more than 250 games available, so you can take your pick.

Tablets and iPads

These really are changing technology and how we work. The iPad mini was released last year but didn’t seem to be as popular as the original design. Microsoft finally released their tablet, Surface. You can either use it as a tablet or attached magnetically to a keyboard to create a desktop. It’s very versatile and has beautiful 27 cm screen with a well thought out display. Like its iPad opponent it too has up to 64 gigabytes of memory. Apple or other, tablets are a tone of fun. You download apps, read books and magazines and surf the web. They do everything a computer can do but so much smoother and easier. It’s all about making life easier for the consumer.
These items are going to be useful after the cruise too, they are all worthwhile investments. Whether you need to update your technology or just want the latest gadget, you might as well get it before you go on your cruise holiday.

Written by Jasmine Poole
Jasmine has travelled across 30 countries in the last 18 months. She is currently in Darwin, Australia.

Just how do the discount airlines do what they do? How do they manage to provide short-range international flights like London to Mallorca for £18 and Dublin to Paris for €9? Of course, anyone who’s attempted to take advantage of these miraculous offers knows the secret already — they don’t.

The discount airlines use tricks and bait and hidden fees and small print and a deliberately dizzying array of other spring-loaded traps to get the real cost of your seat out of you and they will, no matter what, get it. They’re not charities. Having said that if you can tolerate a few drawbacks and clawbacks and you carefully and minutely observe the following rules the discount airlines can still be appreciably cheaper than than the alternatives.

Don’t be naive — these people are not your friends

Do you remember the golden age of jet travel? The age of the Pan-Am travel bag and pretty stewardesses in brassy, Pierre Cardin miniskirts offering you an in-flight martini and lighting your Lucky Strike? An age when a kind word and a wink and sharp suit could get you bumped to first class? Of course you don’t, because that was the 1950s when a flight cost the equivalent of a year’s income for the average family of six.

Fly the friendless sky

That golden age was followed by a democratisation of flight largely facilitated by the deregulation of international routes and a massive increase in competition (and the consequential demise of industry colossuses like Pan-Am) but travel then was still very much a gentleman’s agreement and airlines competed on qualities like comfort and breadth of destinations.

The third age of flight is the one we’re in now — it’s the age of the deep discount airline and it’s characterised mainly by an adversarial relationship between passenger and carrier. It’s your job to pay as close to the advertised price as you can and it’s their job to get as much out of you as they can. As a matter of policy they will maximise the profit of this one trip and they absolutely do not care if you never fly with them again.

The booking and registration process are exactly as complex as they’re intended to be. You’ll need to be particularly vigilant when deciding if you do not want to reject the offer to not accept the automatic addition of flight insurance, for instance. You’ll need to take notes as you pass through pages and pages of offers and rules and options and you cannot go back without crashing your browser but it’s guaranteed that you’ll need a detail from page two to avoid a surcharge on page five.

If you make a mistake then you’ve spent money. From the perspective of the airline it wasn’t a mistake, it was a positive entry in a cold-blooded statistical success rate and no amount of self-deprecating apology is going to move them. You can’t call them, even if that would do any good, and explaining to the pretty girl at the checkin desk at the airport that you meant to not select the “Reject to refuse to accept early check-in” option will be a similar experience to asking for mercy from a brick wall, if that brick wall could smirk a little, betraying a twisted pleasure in your pain.

Don’t be too fussy about where you’re going, because you’re not going there

You’ll be happy to know that the discount airlines aren’t just strong-arming you — many of their costs are defrayed by the suspension of airport fees and taxes and other incentives offered by remote and under-used freight airports and municipal governments hungry for even the parsimonious tourist brought in by the discount airlines.

These airports do not have modern luxuries like restaurants and heating and they very often don’t have an obvious way of getting to where you were told you were going. Charleroi airport in Belgium, mischievously renamed Brussels-South to satisfy its discount masters, is 60 km from the European capital. Ryanair’s Paris flights land at Beauvais airport, fully 84 km to the north, but you can take a coach for only €16 (tickets are available, handily, on the plane) and an hour and twenty minutes to Porte Maillot, which is very nearly in Paris!

So you’re not getting there when you think you are, either. Discount airlines are, in fact, notoriously punctual and will not abide a single litre of fuel wasted idling on runways, but as noted above the flight itself is the minor leg of your journey; Lau-Tzu’s profoundly observed “single step”. Furthermore the advertised schedule is a classic bait-and-switch — sure, you can spend the weekend in Rome for £48 return if your weekend starts at 22h30 on a Saturday night and ends at 06h05 Sunday morning. For a schedule that accommodates seeing, say, Rome, you’re going to need to pay something close to what a real airline would charge. Real airlines use that money to pay for real landing slots, so their passengers arrive at night or in the morning with some latitude in their planning. The discount airlines get the discount slots, so you’ll either be getting up at 4am to catch your flight or arriving at your destination as the sun’s going down.

So the trick is flexibility. And rigidity. A rigid flexibility. In any case you need to be very fastidious about the process and small print but very relaxed and easygoing about destinations and travel times.

Next week — the discount is in the details

With what appears to be a school holiday every other week, it can be really difficult to keep up with the holiday planning, and you may find yourself running out of ideas before long. Kids definitely need stimulating, but get bored very easily so choosing something new and refreshing for the family can be hell unless you opt to travel further away each time.

Another thing to consider is that many activities don’t necessarily suite the whole family, so it can be quite a challenge in itself getting the right balance of fun, education, entertainment and of course relaxation for mum and dad. The difficulty in many cases is that travelling anywhere with the kids can be so hectic and stressful that it takes the fun out of the trip.

What you need is a solution to give you the break you need but allow the kids to have a fun-filled, action-packed holiday doing all the activities they love, without the hassle of you organising it all!

Holiday camps may just be the perfect solution for the little ones. With a huge variety of activities to choose from, there is a package to suite even the fussiest of mites. Whether they prefer a week of dancing and singing or perhaps a multi-activity of archery, football, horse-riding and more, the kids camps are great for entertainment, education and of course socialising, having fun and meeting new friends! The chances are they won’t want to come home.

Activities for the kids are really important in developing many much needed skills. Children can benefit enormously from taking part in fun activities, and in many cases they just see it as having fun when in fact they are constantly learning as well as exercising. Obviously there are great things for the kids to do wherever you go, but it can be time consuming finding all the information you need and planning the itinerary for your trip.

Places such as Camp Beaumont are a great place to start looking at package camp holidays for the kids. Day trips are also available, which may be a good idea to ease them into being away from home, before a residential week away. And everything is included in the trips, including dedicated and trusted staff, pastoral care, and even pick up points so you don’t even have to put up with the excitement in the car all the way to camp!

Stepping outside of your comfort zone when visiting a new city is one of the easiest things to do accidentally and extraordinarily difficult to do deliberately.

Take, for instance, getting about. That inevitable, friendly, multi-lingual, multi-level big red bus that will stop and let you off wherever takes your fancy and then stop again to pick you up when you’re cold and hungry is irresistibly reliable and familiar. And I recommend it. It’s not economical for the city bus tours to take their passengers to the suburbs or industrial zones so a hop-on-hop-off tour is an efficiently condensed course in the highlights of the dead centre of your new city and it’s the first thing you should do to lay down a rough, subconscious map.

And then you’re ready to get on a bike. Velib in Paris (and Barclays Cycle Hire in London, Villo! in Brussels, Velo Bleu in Nice and doubtless some equally clever or sponsored name for the same scheme in whatever city you’re visiting) has been trending up since it was introduced in 2007 and with good reason. This is exactly the sort of committee-inspired, municipally-funded, bureaucratic nightmare that should fall flat on its stupid face the moment it’s launched but Velib is none of these things  —  it’s a free-market, privately-funded, advertising-driven, customer-focused service that’s conveniently placed 1800 bicycle rental kiosks each with dozens of bikes all over Paris (and similar numbers in London and Brussels and Vienna and so on).

Like most of the best ideas it’s boringly simple. Your rental period starts when you pick up your bike at one rental stand and ends when you drop it off at another, anywhere else that you find one. The success of the scheme doubtless rests on the fact that you will always find one and in the vanishingly rare instance that you don’t you get an extra fifteen minutes of rental for free and a list of the nearest available slots. The popularity of Velib is such that you’re far, far more likely to be disappointed when looking for a bike in the first place then you will be trying to find an empty dock to which to return it.

In Paris you can associate a subscription of up to a year with a credit card or, more conveniently, your Navigo (metro pass). As a tourist, though, you’ll want to take one of the one or seven day subscriptions, pay online with your credit card and rent and replace your bike with a PIN.

The first time I rode a Velib in Paris I took it directly to the next nearest station, put it back and judged myself quite satisfied with this first effort. Don’t be like that. The second time I took it from Gare du Nord to the sixth, which is about 10 km and it was a dawdle. I would suggest though that you make a point of knowing at least roughly where you’re going so that you’re not looking at street names and landmarks or Google Maps when you really, really need to be paying attention to the cars around you. Paris is in fact fairly bike friendly but it’s still a very busy city with correspondingly busy roads and a metropolitan Smart Car in Paris will kill you just as dead as a New York Cadillac.

So be careful and be bold and you’ll have the navigation edge over every other form of transportation in Paris, London, Vienna, Brussels and all the other cities that are introducing the future of urban transport.