When you go to Europe this summer and are planning for the trip, there's a little combination of things that will make your trip a lot more pleasurable. An iPad, a Hulu account, and a VPN. I'll explain what these are, how to get them, and how to use them in a bit but you might be wondering why you should watch Hulu in Europe on iPad? Isn't Europe beautiful? Isn't Europe fun and interesting?

Why would you spend your time watching American TV when you could be taking pictures of Swiss mountains, learning about Czech cathedrals and chilling out in French cafe's? The is that you're definitely going to get BORED, and you need an convenient way to cure it. Buses, trains, airport lay-overs and rainy days are all reasons you need an arsenal of stuff to keep you busy and being able to watch Hulu in Europe on your iPad is a great idea.

iPad, and the soon to be iPad 2 are the ultimate boredom-fixer. It's small enough to fit in a man-purse or one of those huge bags girls tend to carry around. This means it's convenient for day-trips. If you're backpacking, it's great to find in that top compartment of your rucksack - you know, the one you stuff your dirty socks in because you're late for your plane and you can't figure out how you ever packed everything into one bag back at home. Leave the socks and slip your iPad in there. Just don't stuff it in the middle of some shirts somewhere because you'll have to dig it back out.

The next thing you'll need to watch Hulu in Europe on iPad is of course, a Hulu account. Hulu has free video available - the newest five episodes of everything, clips from TV and movies, as well as a selection of movies. Ok, the movies are usually Lifetime movies which no one watches anyway, but remember, you're preparing for boredom. You might have nothing else better to do. Hulu Plus offers everything else. For eight bucks a month you can get hundreds of episodes of your favorite new and classic show. They've got 700 episodes of Saturday Night Live, all of Lost and Heroes, and after a billion seasons of Desperate Housewives you can imagine what kind of stuff they've got in they're library. Hulu is great because you don't have to download torrents.

I know, torrents are free and you can store them on your computer and it's almost like you own them. But do you really need that 6,000 gig hard drive with EVERY episode of television and EVERY song you've ever listened to? Do you want to drag that thing with you do Europe? Or do you want to have to plan our what stuff you want to take with you, dividing you hard drive up, buying a smaller one, risk losing it somewhere, or not lose it and find out what you really feel like watching right now is back at home? It's much more convenient to have everything on-demand at Hulu (and Pandora - for music). This is why I don't take my hard drive and just watch Hulu in Europe on my iPad.

And now, for the final price to the puzzle. It's called a VPN. You need one of these (there's no hardware) because sites like Hulu, Netflix, and Pandora all block users from outside The USA. It's got something to do with distribution rights and Internet piracy, but you don't have to worry much about that. Basically, and VPN allows you to hide your IP address, get a US IP address, and get access to these sites (including Hulu) from anywhere in the world. These are legitimate services that are used to surf the Internet anonymously, bypass Internet censorship, and unblock sites - being able to watch Hulu in Europe on iPad is just one of the things they can do.

Because you're using iPad or iPad 2, you want to get something called an L2TP VPN for iPad. PPTP is also possible, but in general L2TP is more secure and preferable to PPTP. They cost the same anyway. SSL is used for laptops, so you don't have to worry about that. Remember that a VPN isn't a piece of hardware, so you just have to download it and then you'll be able to connect or disconnect through you iPad General Settings area. Download should only take a minute or two because the file is not large, and connecting to the VPN takes about the same time. One more key thing to remember is that you need to sign up with a VPN service that has VPN servers in America.

With these three tools now under your belt, you travel experience is sure to be boredom free now that you can watch Hulu in Europe on iPad.