The countdown begins!

Alright, reality is beginning to set in - we are leaving in 9 days. Actually, in 9 days we will be GONE! My list of things to do is surprisingly short, yet, as last minute details go, quite important.

One of the most exciting aspects of this trip for me, as the mom, is being able to have this experience with my kids. I have been to Europe twice before, once with a casual friend to London for a week and a few years before that to France with a family friend. Both trips were fun and exciting, but without family. My memories and perceptions were all my own. This trip will be a collective experience with shared memories and I think that will be awesome.

Also, the fact that I have been planning this trip for over a year is wonderful. Hammering out the details for such a long time makes me feel oh, so prepared! (I will probably laugh at my naivete) And now that I have made purchases specifically for this type of trip, I hope that we will continue the adventuring! Bryan is talking about South America next year (exchange rate being so horrible in Europe). Each of us will have a back pack (horrors to Bryanna, who could fill a backpack with make-up and hair paraphernalia alone!) - I imagine it will get old by week 5, but wonderful to think that we can fit all we need into a 22" by 18" bag.

Since my last post we have met two people with good advice for our trip. One is a Catholic priest, Father Farnon, that lived in Rome for 8 years and another a friend of a friend that is a native Swiss. Both have warned us about driving in Europe. Italy in particular sounds like a scary video game, and Christa from Switzerland says that driving in Europe is very stressful compared to driving in the US. She says a European would not consider driving 3-4 hours one way to only turn around that evening and do it again. They would spend the night, she says.

So I am trying to find a Mont Blanc alternative. Mont Blanc is a very expensive excursion, so adding a hotel cannot happen. Earlier in the trip, we plan to leave Paris in our rental car and head to Bastogne, Belguim for lunch to see the trenches and memorials then onto Germany through Luxembourg. Might not happen that way, but we can only wait and see...
wish I had packed that tent after all!
Although, taking away the huge expense that Mont Blanc was going to be, adding a train trip to say Venice from Florence is more do-able. Christa had a few suggestions for Swiss Alps (as apposed to French Alps or Italian Alps) enjoyment that will probably work well too. We are never really done planning, I am discovering!

Flexible. We will have to be flexible. So I am starting now to pray for patience and the ability to adapt to any situation AND to not freak out and scare the kids. That last part will need divine intervention, but He has done it before, so I trust He can do it again. Can you imagine if all the kids remember from this trip was, oh yeah and then so and so happened and mom freaked out AGAIN! No, not the memories I am looking for.

I am also starting to pop Airborne like candy and making the kids take vitamin C. I seem to be developing some sort of sinus thing. Sigh. Never in my life have I had sinus issues, why now? I actually stayed home from church this morning (gasp!) because of this horrible run-down and bruised feeling that lets me know I have a doosey coming on. Praying....

Well, I am going to try out my new pocket camera now. One of those small details that need to be worked out: getting photos from my camera and onto the blog. Very important detail! Wish me luck!

Planes, trains and automobiles

I have spent all day (in between schooling of course) researching train, plane and automobile options for the travel portion of our trip. As usual, I am coming in over my budget, which keeps my wheels spinning, thinking of different options.

My biggest concerns are when we are needing to cover a large distance. At one point in the trip, we need to get from Todtmoos, Germany to Rome, Italy. According to my calculations, that is close to 600 miles. In another, we need to get from Florence, Italy to Barfleur, France (about 900 miles) in a day. My guidebooks warn about tolls and fuel prices, plus I wonder if we shouldn't stop along the way to see Milan or Venice... adding a hotel, parking, more food, etc.

I had originally thought we would drive the entire time. I started out today by researching train schedules. Maybe I am reading things wrong, but that is a very expensive option. What I did discover, was that for some reason Milan is just about the cheapest place to fly out of in all of Italy! If it didn't matter that I would be arriving in Paris at 11pm, I could have flown the four of us for about $20 each! Of course, I need to get into Barfleur at a decent time (4 hours away) so I settled on about $70 each.

All in all, I might have saved a couple hundred dollars. My biggest objective was met though, we will not be spending 2 1/2 days in the car and a night in a hotel when we are skipping countries. I could figure out how much money in tolls and fuel I am saving (1500 miles!) but I really should get out of my pjs and feed my family... it is 4:30pm after all.
  
It is hard to believe that we will be on a plane four weeks from tomorrow. Phew! I have got a TON to do!

pushy husbands and panicky wives

My husband is an excellent fit for me - we compliment each other in many ways. However, there are times when he is all about getting something done and I can't manage to stay focused long enough to make an educated decision. And so I stall and he becomes more and more intense and intent on getting his job done. I "climb up my tree" as we call it around here (think nervous cat) and he paces and circles...

Thus the current stand still. I have kids running in all directions, school to accomplish and commitments to fulfill. He wants to book our hotel/hostel in Paris and decide on a rental car - NOW! I worry and wonder about neighborhoods and highway safety, he researches and reports his findings as I am running out the door to deliver a kid to basketball practice or to pick up a friend and expects a coherent decision by the time I return. Oh my!

So I have a pile of bookmarked pages on the computer here and on this sunny Saturday I am trying to make a choice. Great neighborhood with youth hostel suggested in my Rick Steve's guidebook, or questionable neighborhood and comfy (and slightly cheaper) hotel we located on the web. I have decided youth hostel. It will be our first two nights of the trip and I am thinking it will be best to be in a neighborhood that we can walk through at night. Several of the places we would like to see have reduced admittance if you enter late in the day, plus the Effiel Tower at night might be fun.
 
And the car? haven't even attempted that one. Bryan found one that gets an amazing 55 miles to the gallon, but it looks like a tin can - tiny too. The one I had been looking at gets 35 miles to the gallon and is more roomy. I think they are about the same price. This is tough, because we will be doing ALOT of driving - I am guesstimating between 2500 and 3000 miles! Do I go for comfort, or economy?
Either way, it will be a stick shift, running on diesel (@ about $7/gal.) and I won't even leave the lot without a GPS!
Tough one. I hope Bryan will be happy that I made one decision!

Our plans

Okay, this will be today's last post!

This is the rough play by play for our five weeks on the continent:

4/12 Leave NC
4/13 Arrive in London in AM - Eurostar to Paris in PM
4/14 Paris, France
4/15 Paris, France - pick up car - Germany in PM
4/16 Germany
4/17 Germany
4/18 Germany
4/19 Germany
4/20 Germany
4/21 Germany
4/22 leave Germany - to Milan, Italy
4/23 leave Milan - to Rome, Italy
4/24 He is Risen! Easter Sunday in Rome
4/25 Rome, Italy
4/26 Rome, Italy
4/27 Rome, Italy
4/28 Rome, Italy
4/29 Rome, Italy
4/30 leave Rome - to Florence, Italy
5/1  Florence, Italy
5/2  Florence, Italy
5/3  Florence, Italy
5/4  Florence, Italy
5/5  Florence, Italy
5/6  Florence, Italy
5/7  leave Florence, Italy - Beaune, France in PM
5/8  leave Beaune - to Normandy, France
5/9  Normandy, France
5/10 Normandy, France
5/11 Normandy, France
5/12 Normandy, France
5/13 Happy Birthday Mom! Normandy, France
5/14 leave Normandy, France - to Paris - return car - Eurostar to London in PM
5/15 London, England
5/16 London, England
5/17 Fly home!

The houses we will be renting are in the region of the cities listed. In Germany, we will be in the far south, about an hour from Zurich, Switzerland. We plan to do alot of driving around to the cities and sights near each town. I am hoping my estimates for driving times is accurate, but are quite possibly overzealous. Let's hope not!

Did I mention how blessed we are to be able to take a trip like this? Thank you so much to our ever-gracious heavenly Father for the means for this trip. And so many thank yous to our abundantly generous earthly father and husband, for believing this trip is important for the education and enrichment of his adoring family!

Books and other resources

If you are thinking of planning a trip to Europe, we would like to suggest a some of the resources we have used:

Books:
Take Your Kids to Europe by Cynthia W. Harriman.
Excellent resource for all aspects of planning a trip to Europe. Our top resource!

1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler's Life List by Patricia Schultz. Not used much to plan this trip, but definately the catalyst of my traveling bug.

Rick Steves' Italy
Rick Steves' France

other:
Rick Steves' travel videos. Be careful, you will hardly be able to resist booking your trip after watching his show!
http://www.novasol.com/ we rented all of our homes through this site. Very easy to use and navigate!
http://www.travelocity.com/ cheapest airfare for this trip. Lots of other good sites out there though - compare, compare, compare!!
http://www.venere.com/ for booking European hotel rooms
http://www.booking.com/ again, for booking European hotel rooms
Bryan is the comparison guru, and we settled on these sites for their ease of use and of course, best price.

How we got here

The old van was on it's last wheels. It had a cracked head gasket, and the garage told us that it would get Bryan back and forth to his office in town (a few miles away), but no more. So we started saving. Surprisingly, the van lasted for over a year and we squirreled money away the whole time. Then the van finally died and we had it hauled away. We looked to see how much we had managed to save... not a ton, but certainly more than we had ever saved before.

Which is when the wheels started turning...

couldn't we manage with one vehicle and use that money for something special? Bryan didn't think we could do it, and I had my doubts, but we did, and continued to save in the meantime. Which is when the idea for this trip started to take shape. I bought books, talked to folks, searched the Internet. At first I envisioned the trip I should have taken when I was young and single and the trip Bryan did take inbetween military enlistments and college. Three months, a backpack, train pass and lots of walking from village to village, eating bread and cheese along the way. (which is why, by the way, Bryan isn't coming along: been there, done that times 100!)

Not a reality when you have three kids and are thinking of safety and covering alot of ground. I researched train passes, camp grounds, car rentals, car leasing. Camper van rentals, youth hostels, hotels, bed and breakfast, home swapping, work vacationing... I got quite an education to say the least!

What has taken shape is five weeks visiting six countries, in our own car, staying primarily at rental apartments (called "gites") outside of the major cities we hope to explore. Surprisingly, just about any "cheap" option became prohibitive when times by four.

Transportation:
We feel pretty good about what we paid for our plane tickets. No matter how you slice it, flying four people over the Atlantic Ocean is pricey. We watched the flights for about five months and bought when we saw the price dip below the average. We have continued watching, and have not seen cheaper tickets yet.
Traveling in Europe:
Four Eurail passes would have cost several hundred dollars more than a four week car lease, plus the inconvenience of being locked into a train schedule that does not take sleeping time into consideration. Taxis, bus and other expenses would increase this category. We do need to add fuel and tolls to the total lease option, but we feel that we will at the very least come out flush. I expect that the added safety and convenience will also be huge.

Lodging:
We are four traveling: three females 9, 15 and 40 yrs old and one 12 yo male which means we are looking for youth hostels with family rooms (putting my son alone in a male dorm is not an option). The average family room (IF they are available) is 95 euro which is about $135 a night. Many hostels do not take reservations, so questionable lodging seemed risky.
Campgrounds seemed like a good option. We love to camp and have taken several extended camping trips here in the US. Plus, everything I read about European camping seemed wonderful. I researched camper van rentals, but found them too expensive for an extended stay. No problem I thought, after settling on a car lease - we would car camp. Great idea, but what shot this option out of the water for me was the amount of gear we would need to bring with us to be relatively comfortable and for cooking for four. I am also thinking that a few rainy days could potentially push us over the edge. A week camping is fine, but five or more weeks could be too much for us. Many folks could swing this and save some money, but I know our limitations and decided to opt out.
This led to apartment renting. It is highly recommended for an extended stay in many of the books and websites I visited and several agencies were listed. Our average apartment rental is 70 euro a night. We set our own curfew, have our own bathroom (!!!) and a kitchen for meals. We have rented these through an on-line service, and am trusting the information listed to be accurate. They are supposed to be equip with the basic comforts and necessities. We will still be bringing towels, sleep sacks and pillows. We will share our findings while we are there.

Food:
A major consideration. Depending on who you are talking to, you can spend a fortune to a pittance on food in Europe. My hope is that by shopping in our local market, eating in our rental for breakfast and picnic lunches/dinners will leave some money for a few restaurant meals each week. Again, we will be keeping close track of our expenses here and will share our discoveries.

Our flight leaves on April 12th and we will be home on May 17th. We are still fleshing out the details, and will share our discoveries as they arise!