Hi all!
I just have a quick question about safety of suitcases, backpacks in hotels in Paris. I am going over in a few weeks and would like to take my notebook computer so I can download photos along the way (I am travelling europe for a month total) and was just wondering how safe it will be to leave my notebook in my backpack or suitcase (both will have locks) at the hotel during the day. We will probably be staying in fairly low-budget hotels, but, that being said, do most european hotel have safes to lock up valuables or would I be best to just leave my notebook at home? Any advice that can be offered would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
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Don%26#39;t know about Paris as my first trip there won%26#39;t be until the end of April, but we did exactly what you describe on a trip to Italy in 2003. Took my trusty iBook and the adapter cable for my camera. I never lugged the beast around with us during the day, and we stayed in 2-star type hotels that didn%26#39;t have room safes (at least not that we found). I generally just buried the laptop in the bottom of a locked suitcase. Since we never brought the laptop out in public view, I figured it was reasonably safe from anyone except a truly curious and brazen hotel worker. Maybe a false sense of security, but we stayed in 6 different hotels and didn%26#39;t have a problem in any of them.
Added and unexpected benefit was that we found free WiFi signals from our hotel rooms in both Rome and Florence. Best I can tell these were not coming from the hotel -- probably just some nearby neighbor with a non-password protected router. Saved us at least a few Euros in each place and was much more conveneient than hitting a cybercafe in the middle of a sight-seeing day.
I would recommend, hower, that you back up all of your personal files and leave a copy at home. I went further than that by wiping my documents folder clean and also scrubbing my e-mails and the cookies/bookmarks on my web browser. Paranoid? Perhaps. But it was a half-hour of effort for a lot of peace of mind. If the machine had been stolen, I was only out the expense of replacing it vs. the potentially massive headache of having some criminal in Europe running around with a digital transcript of my life.
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I actually found that the best advice was to make sure your personal items are all in your bags, packed up and closed (preferably with a small lock) during the day. That way no workers can pick up your stuff, and will find it a little less tempting to get into your stuff. Just don%26#39;t leave your computer, camera, etc laying around your room. If you%26#39;re really worried, place a small lock on your bags (at the zippers - available at any REI), and maybe take a bike lock and lock your bag to a non-movable item in the room.
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Hi MDV,
I have a trusty ibook as well, and can%26#39;t imagine an entire month without it! Thanks for the advice (thanks as well to the other post), I feel more reassured that leaving it in a locked suitcase, well out of site from hotel staff will probably be safe enough. Good idea to backup everything and delete cookies as well, just in case! Thanks!
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