{"id":1830,"date":"2018-12-30T14:36:27","date_gmt":"2018-12-30T22:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hovorka.org\/?page_id=1830"},"modified":"2018-12-30T16:46:44","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T00:46:44","slug":"europe-2009","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hovorka.org\/index.php\/trips\/europe-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

We started planning this trip in 2001. Not this specific trip exactly, but we planned on going ‘overseas’ somewhere. So we got our passports. Then the dot-com crash happened and I was unemployed for a long time. That put a damper on a big trip like this. So now that our passports have no stamps and are nearing expiration, we decided that it was time to go. Plus it’s our 15th wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n

We started planning this specific trip almost a year ago. We decided to start in London (since they sort of speak the same language) and we really wanted to see Pompeii. So we tried to find things we could see in between those two spots. (Why can’t we pick two places that are a little closer together?). The list of things to see grew very large. We had to trim a lot, but who says we can’t go back someday. We did not stay more than 4 days in any city. Our intent was to do a highlights only European Grand Tour. 6 countries, 21 days, roughly 3200 miles (5150 km), not including the flight from Seattle. This was not a package tour, we planned this and booked this all by ourselves. No one in their right mind would try to do so much in one trip.<\/p>\n

Denise and I never backpacked through Europe after college. I’m not sure I even realized it was an option, but I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it back then anyway. So now, 20-something-mumble-mumble years later, off we go to backpack through Europe – of course Denise is much younger than me so it’s only been a couple of years after college for her \ud83d\ude42 Although the budget was slightly larger than a college kid can afford, it wasn’t by much. We didn’t stay in $10 a night youth hostels. We mostly stayed at Mom-and-Pop hotels-pensions-zimmers. More along the lines of a bed and breakfast in some cases, or just a really small hotel in others. The rooms are small, and the bathrooms are tiny, but usable. We don’t spend much time in the hotels anyway, so we don’t care what the room looks like, as long as it’s clean and we can fall asleep. These hotels were much cheaper than chain hotels. Almost all of the hotels we stayed at were under \u20ac100, most around \u20ac60. Not bad prices for staying in city centers. Compared to our other trips, this was our longest trip at 21 nights, therefore the highest total cost. But when you calculate price per person per day, this trip cost less than our Alaska trip from 2000.<\/p>\n

Living near Rick Steves<\/a>, we drank his Kool-aid and followed his style of European budget travel. We bought his books and visited his travel store a few times to attend free classes on various topics, including teaching us some basic phrases in foreign languages. His recommendations were pretty good. Another thing he preaches is packing light. We always packed light anyway, but this time we really got it down to the basics. One backpack per person for 3 weeks, small enough to carry it on the plane and stuff it under the seat in front of you. We did laundry on the road, mostly in the hotel sinks. We brought ‘quick dry’ clothes and washed them with CampSuds. Everything (except my socks) would dry overnight. The clothes were very comfortable and remained clean. We brought 2 or 3 pairs of pants, 3 or 4 shirts, enough socks and underwear for a week, one pair of shoes, one jacket. That’s it. No laptop. I had my Nokia tablet and Denise has her Sony Reader (she brought 60 e-books, I brought 1 physical book). We did a little bit of laundry almost every night. The only nights we didn’t do laundry were the nights before we traveled to a new city. It only took a few minutes. We used a washing machine in Italy, but the rest of the time we did the laundry in the sink. It really was no big deal.<\/p>\n

We took the train everywhere except to get to Naples, Italy. We did not buy a rail pass and we actually saved money by not buying one. We bought the long distance tickets in advance, because like airline tickets, they are cheaper when bought in advance (London to Brussels to Cologne and Arles to Paris), but the rest we bought as we went. We flew from Switzerland to\/from Naples, since the train ride was anywhere from 11 to 15 hours while the flight was more like 1.5 hours, and the budget airlines like Easyjet are pretty cheap.<\/p>\n

We started in London, hitting some of the museums.\u00a0 We renting a car for a day to drive to Stonehenge and Windsor Castle (and for the excitement of driving on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car). Then we traveled by train to Brussels, Belgium for lunch, and on to the Rhine River in Germany to view some old castles. From there, we went to Europa Park<\/a> for some roller coaster thrills. After spending a night in Basel, Switzerland, we flew to Naples, Italy so we could see Pompeii, Sorrento and Paestum. We flew back to Switzerland, this time to Geneva, and caught a shuttle bus to Chamonix, France to stand on a mountain at 12,000 ft. in elevation. Then we took trains to Arles, France to see old Roman ruins. Finally, a train to Paris before flying home. <\/p>\n

Day 1 - Sep 1, 2009\r\nLast updated: 10\/2\/09 8:00pm PT<\/pre>\n
The day began on Aug. 31st. We had a 6:50pm flight, which was delayed by an hour. We used Shuttle Express to get to the airport instead of paying for 3 weeks of parking. We could not adjust our prearranged pick up time. There was no traffic and the airport was empty. There was no line at airport security so we had about 4 hours to kill at the airport. We landed in London about 1pm on Sept. 1st. It’s a 9 hour flight and London is 8 hours ahead of Pacific time, so in our minds it was 5am. We dove right in and did some walking around the city. This helped with the jet lag. As I mentioned in the blog, we had really cramped seats. My knees were in the seatback in front of me and I could barely move. Gave me thoughts of springing for a seat upgrade on the ride home, but we ended up getting bulkhead seats home, which was much better.<\/p>\n
During the trip, we saw plenty of people struggling with multiple, large pieces of luggage. I even helped a couple of people carry their bags up stairs. Fools, all of them. This is the way to travel. In fact, my bag was too heavy, so I immediately ate half of the M&M’s that I brought.<\/p>\n