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Organize and share photos with Google Photos

Organize and share photos with Google Photos

mcangeli
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On trips, we tend to take a lot of photos. If we’re at Disney or on a cruise, Amy always makes sure to get the photo package and we usually take advantage of *EVERY* opportunity offered when a cast or crew member has a camera in their hands. The girls just know at this point that its part of the trip and go along with the photos (on the Alaskan cruise they even surprised us with some of just the three of them that we knew nothing about).

Photo packages make it easy to get good photos on your trips and for us its worth it, but how do you manage all the photos you take on your phones or personal cameras? Enter Google Photos!

It’s fun to see who took what photos on a trip

Google Photos is a free app from Google (it does require a google account, but these days who does not have one of those?) that will automatically back up your photos (or other image/video files) to your google account and then allow you to remove them from your device freeing up space for more photos! One of the nice features is that if you upload the original size image files, you have almost unlimited space.

You can set it to upload via wifi only (so it only backs up to the cloud while you’re connected to a wifi network) which is good for those of us who watch our data use and once uploaded you can create shared albums which allow those you share the album with to add their own photos. The nice thing about this is that while you’ll get some duplicates, you also get to see the trip through the eyes of someone else on it and they may have caught a different perspective than you.

You can share the album with as many people as you like and there are plugins for wordpress that make it easy to share in a blog post or on a site. I won’t go in to that now, but we’ll talk about those at a later date.

Adding photos to the albums is fairly easy as well, you just pull up the album you want to add photos to, hit the + button and select the photos you want to add. Once they’re added, everyone added to the album can see them (and the nice thing is that it sorts them by date and time automatically and adds the name of the person who added them). It makes it pretty easy for sharing photos from the same trip and if you have a smart display or chromecast device at home, you can set the albums to display on those devices as well as a digital photobook.

We have some albums with almost 5000 images in them (from our Alaskan Cruise) and from a quick search, it looks like you could have upwards of 20,000 images in a single album (talk about a new goal!).

In all, Google Photos makes it easy to share memories from trips or just in general.

Send a postcard with mypostcard

Send a postcard with mypostcard

mcangeli
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This is just a sample of the ones I came home with.

When we travel, the girls all look for shirts or sweatshirts as reminders of the places they’ve visited. I look for postcards and stickers. They’re usually cheaper, you can do more with them and in general, you won’t spend more than a couple of bucks on them. When Google’s Local Guides sent me a coupon code for a free postcard from mypostcard.com I definitely had to give it a try.

The nice thing is that you can use the site or the app (on android or iOS) to create and send your post cards. You simply download the app, sign in or create an account (you can use your Google or Facebook account to create or sign in) and design your card. The prices start around 1.99 (that includes shipping) but there are a couple of options that could increase the price. So for the cost of the stamp plus a postcard, you can send a completely custom card from wherever you are. This is great for someone who wants to send a post card or remember a specific point in time.

They do appear to mail the postcards via standard first class USPS mail, which is how you’d be mailing them if you bought a traditional postcard and stamp and mailed it yourself. Anyone with some good image skills could create some pretty cool postcards on their phones and have some pretty unique reminders of their trips.

If you want to try out MyPostCard.com click the link (or enter our code MARKR8ZR ) and you’ll get $3 of free credit to use for your first post cards!

Day one, Embarkation

Day one, Embarkation

mcangeli
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  1. The Angelis go to Alaska!
  2. Welcome to Seattle
  3. Day one, Embarkation

So after exploring the city in the morning, we made our way back to the hotel and gathered up all of our baggage for the trip ahead. Once we were ready, we met the shuttle that was going to drive us to the port. The drive over from the Space Needle was less than 15 minutes and we were on our way inside before we knew it.

The embarkation process was pretty standard, though not quite as friendly as on previous cruises. The agent at the station we ended up at was rather insistent that NO ONE else be in the area when she was taking our photos for our Sea Pass cards (it became a running joke on the trip) and we were making our way up the ramp to the ship before we knew it.

Making our way up the ramps to board the ship

There were the usual photo stops on the way (of course we stopped for each one) and we were back out in the open and on board before we realized it.

We weren’t able to go right to our rooms but we were able to head up to the Windjammer for lunch, so we grabbed some food and went and found a table out on the pool deck. After a quick lunch, we were able to go to our rooms. This time we had separate cabins on different decks so the two older girls went to their room and Amy, Mary and I headed to ours to rest a bit and get ready for the Muster drill. Due to the ages of the kids, I did have to be in the other girls room for the drill and any emergencies, so Emma and I traded places for the drill.

View from the top deck with Seattle in the background

After the drill, we made our way to the top deck to watch the ship leave port and we spent some more time exploring the Explorer of the Seas

The ship had the usual party going on on the top deck and the weather was pretty nice as we were leaving Seattle. It was probably the best day for using the pools (not that any of us really did that on this trip). The girls and I made use of the time to explore the rest of the ship and Amy jumped on the spa deal of the day.

We had a later seating for dinner (we’ve found that on the cruises, a later seating is better for us as it gives us more time on days we’re in port) so the four of us not spa-ing it up went to the opening show and Amy caught up with us at dinner. After dinner, Amy and I were beat, but the girls wanted to explore so we let them head out to see what the evening had to offer.

Welcome to Seattle

mcangeli
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  1. The Angelis go to Alaska!
  2. Welcome to Seattle
  3. Day one, Embarkation
It seemed like we were in the air forever!

We hit the road to the airport on the 5th in order to catch our flight to the other coast for our cruise. Traveling through Hartsfield-Jackson (ATL) is an experience and they’ve made a bunch of improvements recently. The flight west went without a bump and 5 long hours later we landed in Seattle.

We hadn’t made any plans on how to get from Sea-Tac to our hotel by the Space Needle and the price for an Uber for the 5 of us was a little higher than we wanted, so after a good walk to the light rail station we hopped on the train for the ride in to the city. It turned out to be a pretty decent way to see the city and some of the sights that it has to offer. We did have to transfer to the Monorail in order to get to the space needle though, but it was much easier to do than we had thought.

Bad Decisions Make Good Stories

Once we made it to the needle, we had a 5 minute walk to our hotel where we checked in and asked for some recommendations for a late night bite to eat. We ended up at 5 Point Cafe (which is open 24 hours a day and has a good menu and beer list). The girls didn’t really enjoy the atmosphere, but I thought it was great (and the portions were generous as well). Pretty wiped, we headed back to the hotel for the night.

Friday morning we had some time before we made our way to the port in order to catch our cruise, so we wandered around the Space Needle area and we caught a sight seeing tour on the Ducks of Seattle. This was a pretty neat way to see Seattle and the downtown area as well as the waterfront and some of the other areas of Seattle. Our tour guide was pretty good and knowledgeable about Seattle. We saw several famous sights such as Pike Place Market, the Gas Works park and the house from the movie “Sleepless in Seattle”. Perhaps the coolest part was when the Duck made its way from land to water. 

If it quacks like a duck…

After the Ducks, we had a bit of time to explore a bit more of the area around the needle and pick up some lunch before we made our way to the port for the start of our main adventure!

The Angelis go to Alaska!

mcangeli
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  1. The Angelis go to Alaska!
  2. Welcome to Seattle
  3. Day one, Embarkation

This year was a big year for me (Mark) as it is my 40th birthday. I was content to spend it at home with Amy and the girls with a simple day off (maybe a trip to WhiteWater) and a small celebration with a couple of friends, however, Amy had other ideas.

She had apparently been planning a surprise cruise to Alaska since last November. As a travel agent, she’s usually on top of some of the best travel deals and had found an amazing deal for an Alaskan Inside Passage cruise and booked it without telling anyone.

Amy had to let Grace in on the secret in February so that Grace wouldn’t be upset when she wasn’t signed up for an orchestra camp she usually attends in the summer, and the two of them enjoyed planning the trip and keeping the secret from the rest of us.

Working like thieves in the night, Amy and Grace put together an album as a present for me. This album includes photos from our 20 years together and all the trips we’ve taken as well as other highlights of the past. The final pages were how they announced that we were going on a bucket list trip to Alaska for my birthday.

Look out Alaska, here we come!

Now that the rest of us were let in on the secret, we were able to plan and finalize our trip. 

We’d head from our home on the 5th of July to Seattle, WA, where we’d board the RCCL Explorer of the Seas for our cruise to the untamed frontier, exploring glaciers, the Klondike and some of the best that Canada and the Pacific North West have to offer.