Europe Trip 2019 Part 1: Planning

The extent of my European experience is that I was born in England, on an Air Force Base, and we only lived there for 6-9 months. I didn't even get an option of citizenship, haha. My moms family is Italian and my dads family is Slovenian. My mother-in-laws family came from Switzerland. There has always been a desire to see Europe (and travel in general).

Our youngest daughter LOVES to travel. She's just getting her feet wet but she has a strong desire to see the world. She started her own blog, Wandering Wild, where she talks about her travels. This last spring she traveled to New Zealand with some friends, and I think that helped get up the courage for her to travel on her own to Switzerland. We have friends there who have been wanting her to go for the past 6 years but she just wasn't sure about traveling that far on her own. BUT this year she finally planned it. A one month trip to Switzerland to stay with people she knew, but didn't really know, to be without her friends, family and familiarity. She saved her money, bought her tickets, made her plans and off she went. In this whole process, we thought, wouldn't it be fun to join her. It's been awhile since hubby and I took a trip,  and we never really celebrated our 25th anniversary, which was a few years ago. We also knew she would love to go to Italy, but didn't want to make that trip by herself, even though it was so close to where she was in Switzerland. So, we bit the bullet, saved up ourselves and decided to take 2 weeks and join her. We'd spend one week in Italy and one week in Switzerland. I think if we could do it again, we'd take 3 weeks. 



Let's get on with this three part vacation series. The Planning Stage.

 If you've read about any of our other trips, you know we are planners and savers, we aren't about going into debt. A trip to Europe is NOT cheap even if you have budgeted and planned. We talked to friends who had traveled, collected tips and advice along the way. We planned a lot of this on our own, BUT we also enlisted the help of Susan from Critics Choice Vacations.  Let me tell you, this was a HUGE help to us. Friends of ours had recently used her and it was so helpful. Yes, you pay for their services, but there was a real peace of mind knowing all the dots were connected, and even if we decided not to go with, she gave us some great information and answered some of our questions without commitment. We received a HUGE packet in the mail with hard copies of everything, but also access to their app which was also helpful. We had purchased our plane tickets (thankfully we were able to get on the same flight home as our daughter), airbnb's and one train ticket on our own, but she coordinated all other train tickets and rental cars for us, working around and with the things we had already purchased. She would have also planned any tours we wanted to do but we opted out of that this way we could do what we wanted and when, and tours cost money and we were budgeting. The travel agency did arrange for people to pick us up at different locations to take us to our Airbnb's in Italy, which was so helpful, and coordinated some of our travel in Switzerland. The owner of the Airbnb in Lake Como met us at the train station and after we got our rental car, we followed him to the home. He was awesome. I'll link our Airbnb's at the end of the post. 

We did have some friends who had traveled to Italy and she would have totally helped purchase tickets, etc, but I just couldn't get times coordinated to get together with her to do this. So if that's an option for you, you might want to go for it. 

We flew Delta Airlines and it was a great experience. We were well taken care of and well fed. We chose to not have any stops in the US but traveled from Portland, Oregon straight to Amsterdam and then from Amsterdam to Geneva. Our bags went straight through to our final destination which was great because when you have to go through passport checks, the last thing you want to deal with is picking up bags, re-checking them, etc. Our total flight time was around 11-12 hours. We purchased neck pillows, these and these, as well as hubby purchased noise cancelling headphones. I took my tablet with me, and read, played games or watched shows/movies on the airplane screens.

The other thing you will need to be sure you have are proper adapters and/or converters. All of our devices only required us to have adapters but you will want to check your devices needs. I bought this one for Italy, and this one for Switzerland. They worked great. Even though we ended up not really needing it much, I watched a few You Tube channels to try and learn some Italian words. In Switzerland, the majority of people speak English as well so I didn't try. We found in Italy, that many spoke English too but it was fun learning. These were my favorite sites: Learn Italian Free, and Sophies World. My daughter also did a lot of reading about how to order things, what to do and what not to do, what to wear, etc. The girl is thorough. 

We probably packed WAY too many clothes. Seriously. I probably only wore 1/2 or a little more of what I brought. The locations we stayed had washers so we could do laundry, though in Venice there wasn't a dryer so we had to hang the clothes...lol. So if at all possible, pack light. I like the idea of at least checking one back (maybe between two people) just so you have room to bring things back. It was so hard to know what we needed, and with things being more expensive where we were going, it wasn't like "well, if I forgot it, I'll just buy it". SO PACK LIGHT but PACK SMART! Pack clothing items that can mix and match.

Our daughter keeps a journal and when she plans a trip, she researches all the places she'd like to visit, from sights, to coffee shops, to awesome photo op locations, etc. She had quite a list for this trip so we just went along with her ideas (which we thought were great). Making a plan of what you want to see and do really helps if time is limited, it also helps with budgeting because of entrance fees, etc. We were spontaneous too because you have to make room for all of that!

We also rented a car, mainly because we didn't want to be held down to transportation schedules (bus, tram, train) and we wanted to travel when and where we wanted. This allowed us a lot of freedom! My husband got an international drivers license. It's not needed, BUT if for some reason we were pulled over and he had to hand over his normal DL, it's possible they could keep it and we'd be stuck. We did discover that in some areas, like Bassel, we should have just taken a train or tram because parking is SOOOO difficult. These towns are so old but then there is so much growth and buildings but the roads and parking cannot keep up. 

We exchanged our money before we left, but most areas have "ATM" machines where you can exchange when needed, and plenty of places to exchange. 

I should probably stop for now. I'm sure I'm leaving so much out, but as I do the individual posts, I'm sure I'll remember. 

Airbnb: I'll link individual places we stayed in each countries post.

Omio: I purchased train tickets from Geneva to Bern

Critics Choice Vacations

With Joy Unquenchable,