So John and I came up with the idea to take a trip to Europe almost 2 years ago and so it is hard to believe it has now come and gone. Part of our pay as the apartment managers is that we get to keep all the quarters from the washer and dryer in the building so in order to save for the trip we collected all of the quarters for almost 2 years. I called our bank to see about cashing these in as the trip drew closer and they informed me that we would have to roll all of the quarters to cash them. We had been collecting them in one of those huge water containers like you see in offices and rolling all these quarters was not a great option. I also didn't want the coinstar machine to take 10% of our earnings. Luckily some of our friends belonged to a credit union that had a coinstar type machine in the bank and they wouldn't charge you a fee for using it. So we had to meet them at their bank and dump this huge container of coins in the machine, it was such a scene that everyone in the bank was watching us. They even seemed to be excited for us once it was all done. All in all we made over $2000 in quarters, not as much as we hoped but still a nice start. We came up with a general game plan of where we wanted to go on the trip fairly quickly, I am not sure how decided but all of a sudden we had a starting plan. The rest of the details were now up to me. I knew we wanted to see Paris, Venice, Cinque Terre, Rome, Athens, and an island in Greece, we ended up going to Santorini. We only had around 11 days due to the amount of vacation time I had at work so we had to eliminate several stops we originally wanted to make and still were left with a pretty ambition schedule. To start planning I knew the flights would be a major part of the costs so when I got a credit card offer from American that involved getting 30k points just for signing up and then another 30k if you spent 10k and the annual fee was waived I knew I had found my niche. I got the card and we had not trouble racking up those 60k in bonus miles, it was the remaining miles that were slow to add up and I only had a year to do it. I realized almost to late that I really had less than a year to have the points I needed because I had to have the points before I could book the flight and awards type tickets get booked fast. To get the miles we needed in time to still get tickets we ended up having to buy some miles. All in all we basically got 2 tickets for the costs of 1. There are lots of things about reward tickets I learned from this experience but as long as you have patience and time to call the airlines everyday to look for cancellations you can make it work. Our original flight we booked got us home all in 1 day of travel and we booked all our other travel arrangements based on our overseas flight schedule. Unfortunately we got a call closer to our trip that one of the connection carriers went out of business so now we had several long connections to get home and had to use an extra .5 day of vacation, this was our biggest hiccup in travel arrangements so I can't complain to much. We also made the most of our layovers by adding a trip in to downtown London and NY City, I will get to that later.
So as you can imagine I was a very unproductive employee for a large portion of the pre-trip period. All of my free time at work was spent looking for the right hotels, train schedules, easy jet flights, car rentals, and activities we might want to do. The internet has so much information that it can almost be overwhelming but we ended up relying a lot on trip advisor. My criteria when looking for a hotel was that we had to have our own bathroom and how nice were the actual tourist pictures, not the hotel advertisment pictures. My first time I went to Europe I mainly stayed in Hostels, the second time I stayed in tiny rooms with shared bathrooms, and so this time I wanted to go just a step above that. I have to say that all of our hotels turned out to be more than we expected and we were totally pleased so apparentaly my formula worked. Most places were between 100 and 150 Euro per night so you could definitely go cheaper but that is pretty reasonable for a comfortable room. Since we were also going to several places in Europe I had to conquer how we would get to each location, basically plane, train, or car. We used all 3 along with several other transportation methods. For the longer distances we mainly did flights because we were on a tight schedule and didn't have time to waste on trains. Also flights within Europe are a lot of times cheaper than taking the train, but you have watch out for fees and consider costs of getting to the airport. We used 5 different different airlines on our trip so I made sure to read all the rules and tips for each airline because flight complications were my biggest concern. Being a pound over a luggage limit can also cost you big time on budget carriers so I didn't want to risk it. Another key when flying so many places is to plan ahead how you are going to get to and from the airport. Most cities we were going to were usually close to an hour from the airport so you don't want to get stuck taking an expensive taxi in to the city. If you are wondering how you are suppose to keep all this information straight I used a binder. I had copies of all our boarding passes printed, they charge you extra for that on some airlines, I also had information I found on travel sites online with detailed instructions about where to go in airports and how to get to the city. Even if we didn't follow the instructions exactly it gave us a general idea what to look for since everything was foriegn to us in each new location and it can get overwhelming quickly.
In Italy we decided to rent a car so we could drive from Venice to Cinque Terre, which is on the west coast of Italy, and then from there to Rome. We hoped to see Bologna, Parma, Pisa, Florence, and parts of Tuscany all from our little car along the way. We were dreaming but it still made for some of our best memories of the trip. Rental cars are a whole different level of planning because we wanted to be flexible but had timelines to be places so you have to have some general routes planned and then alternate routes and I spent a lot of time looking at different places we could stop along the way. I will get in to more detail about our Fiat experiences in another blog.
Also since we would be taking public transporation once we were in all the cities I knew from past experiences that we would be hauling our luggage down city streets trying to find a hidden gem of a hotel. That is another reason we tried to pack lightly. We each took a duffel with wheels, mine was small and John's was medium and then we each had an average size backpack. I actually have very little trouble packing and never felt like I needed more clothes while we were over there. The key is to be realistic and we knew we weren't going really formal anywhere so I could leave the heels at home. I bought a pair of toms that I could wear with anything and read online that they should be comfortable with all the walking and they were. I also had a couple small sandels and a pair of tennis shoes for our hiking day. I brought an old pair so that I could just throw them out after I didn't need them anymore, this left room for a few souveniers.
Most of the remaining research time I spent online involved researching sites we might want to see. It is good to look ahead at places you know you will want to see because museums are closed on random days, so our restaurants, and markets and you don't want to set yourself up for dissapointment. Also you can find lots of tips online about how to efficiently see stuff, like where to find the shortest line. I did drop the ball on my Athens planning but other than that we had a pretty good plan for each day. Don't get me wrong we wanted to be flexible but when you are on a tight schedule it is good it have an idea of what you really want to see so you can make sure you can fit it all in. We also planned the trip so that we had a mix of cities and non-cities. Cities can be very tiring and overwhelming so we actually found most of the non-cities stops to be our favorites. We also love beautiful scenery so sometimes you have to get out of the city to find that. So now we've got our binder of plans, copies of important documents, and bags packed, next blog we will be in Europe. If you are wondering what planning John had to do for this trip, he looked up food stuff, that is his speciality.
So as you can imagine I was a very unproductive employee for a large portion of the pre-trip period. All of my free time at work was spent looking for the right hotels, train schedules, easy jet flights, car rentals, and activities we might want to do. The internet has so much information that it can almost be overwhelming but we ended up relying a lot on trip advisor. My criteria when looking for a hotel was that we had to have our own bathroom and how nice were the actual tourist pictures, not the hotel advertisment pictures. My first time I went to Europe I mainly stayed in Hostels, the second time I stayed in tiny rooms with shared bathrooms, and so this time I wanted to go just a step above that. I have to say that all of our hotels turned out to be more than we expected and we were totally pleased so apparentaly my formula worked. Most places were between 100 and 150 Euro per night so you could definitely go cheaper but that is pretty reasonable for a comfortable room. Since we were also going to several places in Europe I had to conquer how we would get to each location, basically plane, train, or car. We used all 3 along with several other transportation methods. For the longer distances we mainly did flights because we were on a tight schedule and didn't have time to waste on trains. Also flights within Europe are a lot of times cheaper than taking the train, but you have watch out for fees and consider costs of getting to the airport. We used 5 different different airlines on our trip so I made sure to read all the rules and tips for each airline because flight complications were my biggest concern. Being a pound over a luggage limit can also cost you big time on budget carriers so I didn't want to risk it. Another key when flying so many places is to plan ahead how you are going to get to and from the airport. Most cities we were going to were usually close to an hour from the airport so you don't want to get stuck taking an expensive taxi in to the city. If you are wondering how you are suppose to keep all this information straight I used a binder. I had copies of all our boarding passes printed, they charge you extra for that on some airlines, I also had information I found on travel sites online with detailed instructions about where to go in airports and how to get to the city. Even if we didn't follow the instructions exactly it gave us a general idea what to look for since everything was foriegn to us in each new location and it can get overwhelming quickly.
In Italy we decided to rent a car so we could drive from Venice to Cinque Terre, which is on the west coast of Italy, and then from there to Rome. We hoped to see Bologna, Parma, Pisa, Florence, and parts of Tuscany all from our little car along the way. We were dreaming but it still made for some of our best memories of the trip. Rental cars are a whole different level of planning because we wanted to be flexible but had timelines to be places so you have to have some general routes planned and then alternate routes and I spent a lot of time looking at different places we could stop along the way. I will get in to more detail about our Fiat experiences in another blog.
Also since we would be taking public transporation once we were in all the cities I knew from past experiences that we would be hauling our luggage down city streets trying to find a hidden gem of a hotel. That is another reason we tried to pack lightly. We each took a duffel with wheels, mine was small and John's was medium and then we each had an average size backpack. I actually have very little trouble packing and never felt like I needed more clothes while we were over there. The key is to be realistic and we knew we weren't going really formal anywhere so I could leave the heels at home. I bought a pair of toms that I could wear with anything and read online that they should be comfortable with all the walking and they were. I also had a couple small sandels and a pair of tennis shoes for our hiking day. I brought an old pair so that I could just throw them out after I didn't need them anymore, this left room for a few souveniers.
Most of the remaining research time I spent online involved researching sites we might want to see. It is good to look ahead at places you know you will want to see because museums are closed on random days, so our restaurants, and markets and you don't want to set yourself up for dissapointment. Also you can find lots of tips online about how to efficiently see stuff, like where to find the shortest line. I did drop the ball on my Athens planning but other than that we had a pretty good plan for each day. Don't get me wrong we wanted to be flexible but when you are on a tight schedule it is good it have an idea of what you really want to see so you can make sure you can fit it all in. We also planned the trip so that we had a mix of cities and non-cities. Cities can be very tiring and overwhelming so we actually found most of the non-cities stops to be our favorites. We also love beautiful scenery so sometimes you have to get out of the city to find that. So now we've got our binder of plans, copies of important documents, and bags packed, next blog we will be in Europe. If you are wondering what planning John had to do for this trip, he looked up food stuff, that is his speciality.
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