answers

quick travel answers upon hindsight:

1. funny custom earplugs: kick ass. highly recommended. the grand prix was loud and the ultra high frequencies made your whole head hurt with normal earplugs. but with the custom ones, you could tell it was loud, but you didn’t mind at all.
2. overpriced portable ipod speakers: well, they’re pretty cool. very slim, nice design, easy to use, just open them up and put the ipod in the dock, and instant music. the power plug works with european voltage, and also the ipod can charge in the dock, so you don’t have to bring a separate charger! the sound is good, but lacks bass, despite what it says. the tivoli PAL does sound a lot better. i took it back, but mostly to get back at best buy.
2a. best buy’s in-store pickup: sucks to high hell. the idea is that you can buy on bestbuy.com, they’ll tell you what store they have whatever you want in stock, and you can just go and pick it up. in theory, this sounds great. in practice, this is a huge fucking waste of time. i went there and had to wait 10 minutes for all of them to stop chatting with each other or make personal phone calls, another 20 minutes for them to vanish with my credit card in back to try and find my order, and then another 15 minutes for them to go out on the floor to actually get the item. wasn’t the idea that they would have done all of this already? i could have just walked in, found the item, and bought it myself in 5 minutes on my own. a colossal waste of time that made me late to pick up hmc from the airport the weekend before we went on our trip. it makes me never want to shop best buy ever again. they’re as bad as fry’s, but a bigger chain. ugh.
3. silk moneybelt: don’t bring it again. didn’t use it. who wants to dig underneath their clothes to get money, anyway?
4. shoes: i brought two pairs plus leather sandals, and ended up wearing leather sandals almost the whole time anyway. on less pair of shoes would have been ok.
5. souvenirs: should have bought more french jams and preserves. always handy for oh-shit-i-need-a-gift gifts! and also should have smuggled in more absinthe. because you can never have too much.