Here’s another travel tip from Greg Egan that might be useful to you. If you are bringing digital cameras, laptops, etc. on our trip or anything else that needs power then you might want to read on. Here in the U.S. we run on 110 volts/60 cycles. In Europe they run on 220 volts/50 cycles. In the past, people who traveled to Europe had to bring power converters that were heavy and expensive but would turn foreign voltage/cycles into U.S. voltage/cycles. However, most, if not all power supplies that we now have for cameras and computers are dual voltage.
That means they can tell what power is coming in and can use it. So, no more power converters. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there is no international standard for the plug that goes into a socket. Which means that the plug we have (2 or 3 prong here in the U.S.) will not fit in a European socket. In most cases the European socket takes a plug with 2 round prongs. There are adapters that are relatively inexpensive that allow a U.S. plug to plug in to the back of the adapter and the front of the adapter plugs into the European socket. What you need to do is to look on your power supply (camera, laptop, etc.). On the power supply it will give you the information you need to determine if it is a dual power supply or not. Look for Input 100-240 V (volts) 50-60 Hz (cycles). If it says that or something like it (you need to see 100 or 110 and 220 or 240) then it’s dual voltage.
The adapters for Europe look like the one on the picture. It’s a plug with 4mm round plugs (some are 5mm round plugs but they are for Asia).
