Travel Tips for Safety

As someone with significant training and experience in matters involving security, I think I can provide a better than average assessment of safety while traveling abroad.

Prior to our trip, I took on the task of finding ways to keep us safe and what to do should something happen. You obviously don’t have to go as far as I did, but you should always have “reconned ahead” and come up with a plan(s).

I used different sources and methods to gain intel on the countries we were planning on visiting. As we solidified destinations even more, I checked into the cities where we planned our longer stays.

Anyone has access to the same sources. Social media sites specific to the city are probably the easiest. “Lost in Lucca” on Facebook is one example. These sites have individuals that ask questions and receive answers from locals regarding all sorts of daily activities. I literally learned of a couple incidents of criminal activity in our area from one group post. Almost always the information is merely about a festival or event somewhere, or pictures from the area.

Another source was simply doing a web search for English speaking/printed news sources from your intended destinations. We would browse these almost daily over our morning coffee. This also gave us a good insight into the major things going on in a broader sense. It is one of the ways I believe we found out about the 2025 Jubilee in Italy, which caused us to change our itinerary and completely leave the crowds of Rome off the itinerary. Ansa.it/English was our most used Italian news site.

Tourism blogs and vlogs. I cannot begin to calculate the hours of research we put into this trip from these two sources alone. Security was only one bit of info gleaned from them. I purposely searched for “Why NOT to travel to…” “Tourist scams in….” and other like phrases in my security task. We learned about pickpockets and luggage theft rings in some major cities, and the old, “Ain’t nothing free” scam of handing you a flower, bracelet, picture, trinket and saying it is free. Only to have them begin following you and demanding a contribution or donation as payment.

Another source of information for security is the U.S. State Department for Americans, and the Embassy/Consulate offices of your own country and those you are traveling to for other readers. The U.S. State Dept. has what is labeled as STEP. Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. We are both enrolled, and were able to pick the type of notifications, email or text, that we wish to receive regarding possible security or general travel issues in each of our destinations. You can provide as much information on exactly when/where you will be as you want. We have both received notices of possible social-political marches, local elections and a couple of other minor issues. The State Dept. website also has security threat advisories and levels for every single nation, as well as emergency contact numbers and procedures while citizens are abroad. We thought: What if there is a major natural disaster and we are stranded somewhere? What if there is political strife and upheaval of some sort and we want or must leave quickly? How quickly would we find out information or have access to services to help us? While I have no illusions that a Marine helicopter is going to come pluck us out of danger, at least the government will now know where two of its citizens are and may need help. We are also armed with information on areas to stay away from, if necessary, too. The more knowledge we learned about our destinations, the more excited we got about our trip.

So, is it safe?....

Wait and decide yourself after reading the remaining two posts on this subject.