A New Adventure Begins

The day has arrived. The decision has been made. The non-refundable tickets have been purchased. This is the end of the beginning planning stages. Now it is time for the beginning of the end planning stages. It will be a long process - sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating but always interesting and educational. I will share it all with you...

...but not here. This blog site will be the archive for a new blog pointed toward the future. Please visit at;

lee-reidfamilytravels.blogspot.com

The secret will be unveiled the weekend after Thanksgiving.

To be continued...

June 8th

Let me tell you the tale of the 8th day of June. It is a magical day. Under normal circumstances, it would be magical mainly because it is the day after the last day of school (at least for students) for both Michelle and I. But this year, the date has come to have special significance...

I have been doing a great deal of web searching for airfares to Australia and New Zealand and this is what I have discovered;

• There are very good fares available.
• These very good fares end June 8th (for departures). Depart after that date and you will pay 25-35% more, which is a deal killer for us.
• These fares are good for departures from Los Angeles, not from Minneapolis

So, as far as the potential for a trip to Australia & New Zealand is concerned, we are facing the question of whether or not it is practical to depart on the day after school lets out. There are many obvious drawbacks to this possibility, not the least of which is the fact that Michelle usually works several days after that last day of school (though she is not expected to) and that I may actually be expected to work the next few days. Add to that the general stress involved for everyone in the family at that end-of-school-year time and combine it with the stress to be expected for trip departure preparation and it may be a dangerous combination.

But it is tremendously tempting to try it. Not only is the airfare for the long distance flights quite reasonable on June 8th, but on Quantas, the Australian airline, you can also book numerous relatively short flight options for a discount in combination with the longer flights. Oddly, it doesn't matter that all of these flights would occur after June 8th. In fact, the initial flight departing from Los Angeles would depart at ... get this ... 11:50 PM on June 8th!! but no matter, it's June 8th, and non-summer high season pricing applies. Leave the next day and the same flights are $2000 more for our family. Kind of insane, isn't it?

But anyway, getting back to those multiple flights, here is one example (of at least a dozen possibilities) that I like because it allows us to avoid backtracking on the ground and puts the farthest south locations (where it would be coldest) earlier in the trip, before their winter really kicks in;

• June 8th; Fly LA to Auckland, NZ (on the northern part of the northern island), recover from jet lag and see a bit of NZ's largest city.
• June 12th; Fly to Christchurch, NZ (midway down the southern island) and rent a car. Spend 12 days meandering about 1000 miles back north toward Auckland.
• June 24th; Fly from Auckland to Sydney & spend 5 nights there.
• June 29th; Fly from Sydney to tropical Cairns on the far north coast, near the Great Barrier Reef. Rent a car & stay for a week in a cottage rental there, then drive south to the Whitsunday Islands area and spend a week in a cottage rental there, then drive south to Brisbane.
• July 15th; return the car & fly to LA from Brisbane.

Those three additional flights allow us to cover a great deal of territory very efficiently and only add about $150/person extra to the cost of the two long flights. That's an amazing bargain.

What's that you say? Yes, I know we don't live in Los Angeles. This whole scenario also depends on getting a separate (hopefully cheap) flight to LA to take advantage of the discount options available there. Don't worry, I've taken all that into account. The whole thing would still cost more than we have ever spent on airfare for any trip, just not obscenely more...

...like it would if we tried to do exactly the same thing departing 15 minutes later...

...on June 9th.

Down Under

[click on the map for a larger, clearer view]

Who wouldn't want to go to Australia? Last week I dialed a 1-800 number for multi-city inquiries at Virgin Australia airlines (because their web site oddly did not allow for multi-city options) and I talked to a woman in Australia. Her accent made me melt. Unfortunately, the cost for the type of flight I was inquiring about just made me chuckle and say "...well, thank you anyway...."

A trip like this is a very different beast, in several different ways. The first issue that must be addressed is whether or not to insist upon visiting New Zealand as well. Given the fact that flights between the two are relatively cheap, the two are culturally connected, and the great unlikelihood of doing both separately within the next decade, I would have to say yes, it would be very wise to do them both at once.

However, that requires that we accept the notion that we will come nowhere close to seeing all their is to see of either place. Australia is huge. It would take a full year there, circling the continent (without even venturing much into the outback) to say you saw even most of it. So it's not rational to bother much with the idea of wanting to see all there is to see. New Zealand, on the other hand, is a manageable size. You could see a great deal of it in one 5-week trip. But I don't think we would enjoy such a lengthy, in-depth trip there during their winter, only to return to the prospect of another 6-months of cold in Minnesota just around the corner. The opportunity to spend more than a week there during their summer won't come until we are retired - who knows when.

So the best plan would be to spend about two weeks in chilly New Zealand and about three weeks in Australia, most of that between Brisbane and Cairns along the northeastern coast, where the weather is more tropical and temperatures are between 70 and 80 during the day, even in winter.

Arranging flights would be the biggest hurdle. Several major carriers fly from the US west coast to Australia or New Zealand. Few fly to both. Fewer still offer flights from Minneapolis. So coming up with a flight plan that wouldn't be completely impossible to afford would likely involve cobbling together a number of different flights including cris-crossing routes between the two destinations. The path shown on the map is just one of many possibilities, but it does illustrate the challenge. We could fly into Sydney, spend a few days there, then take a discount flight to Auckland, NZ. There we could rent a car and meander south toward the small city of Christchurch. From there we can take a flight to Cairns, Australia, stay for a week or more and then gradually work our way south by car to Brisbane. From there we can get a direct flight to the US west coast. Similar ground could be covered any number of other ways, too. But we would want to avoid having to backtrack as much as possible to catch the next flight. The more logical path, of course, would be to fly into NZ from the US and out of Australia to the US, but that would require using the same airline for both flights, and that is unlikely to be the most economical option even though, in a rational world, it would be.

Roman Holiday

[Click on each image to get a much larger, clearer view]

We have been waiting for Italy since even before we took our first big trip with children in 2007. We knew we wanted to wait until the children were at the ideal age before going. That ideal age is when our oldest (15 next summer) is still young enough to want to travel with us and our youngest (then 8) is old enough to remember it well into adulthood. Ideally, I think it might be wise to wait another year or two for Joshua to get older. But then again, you never know when Annie's life will get more complicated and she would prefer to stay home with her friends, or for a job, or a camp, or another school-related trip abroad. Who knows what the future will bring. As I mentioned in previous posts, it would also seem wise to take a year off from Europe's millenia-old sights and go somewhere else in order to appreciate them more. But it is hard to say no (or not yet) to such a great place to visit.

This trip could be done any number of ways. I have outlined three here in this post. The first, "Plan A" detailed above, would be the most simple and relaxing (click on the photo to see my red lines better - the little thin red lines imply day trips from a location where we would stay for three to seven nights). This one involves flying into Venice, then traveling west by train to the Cinque Terra (a collection of five cliff side villages only accessible for tourism for the last 30 years or so). Then we would train to a central location near Florence where we would rent a car and spend a week in Tuscany, seeing the small cities of Florence, Pisa, Lucca and Sienna and numerous small Tuscan hilltop villages. We could even spend two weeks here, in two locations - one to the north, where we would spend more time seeing the small cities, and one more to the south, where we would focus on the villages.

Then we would turn in the car and train to Rome, spending a full week in an apartment there. While there, we could take a long day-trip past Naples to Pompeii (a common tourist trek). We would then fly home from Rome.

Plan B would involve seeing more of southern Italy (overlooked by most American tourists) including the island of Sicily. The trip would begin with all the stops of the first option above, but with only a week spent between the cities and towns of Tuscany in favor of an extra week spent in Sicily, making day trips from a cottage rental somewhere centrally located there. We would then have to catch a short flight from Palermo to a more major airport for the flight home.

Plan C would be the most culturally all-inclusive because it would include 7-10 days in Croatia, a place culturally connected to Italy but more like the Italy of 40 years ago - less overrun by tourists and a tad more exotic. The short, but bloody war that took place there 20 years ago is now a faded memory. Most of the damage has been repaired, new borders have separated those who didn't get along and the country is becoming a very welcoming place for slightly more adventuresome tourists. The time for this diversion would come at the expense of seeing Sicily - a fair trade, in my opinion. It would also likely involve a small change in overall itinerary. We would instead begin by flying into Milan and going directly to the Cinque Terra area, getting to Venice at the end of the trip after traveling north through Croatia and through Slovenia. This plan requires us to take a ferry to Dubrovnik across the Adriatic from the less-visited eastern side of Italy.

An alternative that would eliminate the need for the extra distance and the ferry, would be to find a way to start the trip by flying into Dubrovnik and then traveling to Venice and continuing on like plan A, flying home from Rome.

Most major airlines serving Italy and Croatia are significantly more expensive to use than our previous flights. To get a comparable "bargain" airfare that would get us to this corner of Europe will require some creativity. We would either have to use one of the many bargain airlines within Europe to connect from a less expensive major city, or a long train ride from a city like Munich or Paris, which are served by our old friends at IcelandAir.

Celtic Celebration

[click on the map to get a larger, clearer view]

Here is the first of three or more posts outlining our possible family trip for the summer of 2011. I decided to start with this one because, while I think we will do this some time relatively soon, I think it's the least likely of the leading candidates for next year. The reasons were outlined in past posts. But this one is still in the running because it would likely be the cheapest airfare of the three major choices. So if we decide to keep costs as low as possible, this choice would get preference.

The idea is to visit Ireland (which we have never visited even though we have been through Great Britain twice) and combine it with the Scottish highlands, which we have never seen. These two areas are historically and culturally connected as well. Millenia ago, the people who settled Scotland moved on to settle Ireland - thus the common Celtic heritage. In the 1600's (after Ireland and Scotland's cultures had begun to diverge somewhat), ruling England decided to try to colonize the unruly Irish and blunt the effect of their Catholic tradition by transplanting Protestant Scots in the counties to the north. This is what eventually led to the "troubles" and the ultimate splitting of Ireland into two unequal parts and, in the early 20th century, to the free Republic of Ireland while Northern Ireland continues to belong to Great Britain.

We would likely try to fly open-jaw Into and out of Dublin, Ireland and Glasgow, Scotland, taking a ferry the short distance across the water separating the two land masses. Which one comes first wouldn't matter much, but for some reason I always envision Ireland being first. The final choice would likely just depend on what low priced flights were available. We would get around mostly by rental car as rail service is limited and the areas are mostly rural. Driving distances would be relatively short, but twisty, narrow rural roads would also be slow driving at times.

The choice of airlines to fly and cities to fly into and out of are, of course, intertwined and more complex than it seems like it should be. Our favorite low-cost airline - IcelandAir - flies into Glasgow, so that is a natural choice. But they do not fly to Ireland. Aer Lingus - the Irish national airline - flies into Dublin from the US and does offer a short connecting flight to Glasgow, but they do not fly from Minneapolis. The nearest hub is Chicago. Flying into and out of the same city on this trip would require wasted time and money backtracking. Other airlines are usually more expensive. So the flight situation, while probably more economical than other trip options, is still complicated.

The only densely populated areas we would visit on this trip are Dublin (for just 2-3 days), Belfast (for just 1-2 days) and Glasgow (for just 2-3 days). And even these three cities are not really very large. The rest would be rural - and I mean really rural, as in most towns of just a few hundred to a few thousand residents. This would be the most rural trip we have ever taken, by far, even including the trips we have taken within the US. The beauty of rural Ireland and the Scottish highlands is legendary. But I do have some concern that, after 3-4 weeks of seeing numerous, somewhat similar examples of this beauty, we might find ourselves tiring of it and yearning for some bustle of a real city.

The Forgotten Continent

It's fair to ask what our ultimate travel goal is. But all I can answer at this point is that it is a work in progress. The classic answer is that we want to see the world. But let's face it, there are many places we won't have the time or money to see, and there are plenty of places we have little real desire to see (mostly because they are not particularly safe or welcoming to visitors).

Focusing on Europe has been an obvious place to begin because it has a deep history we are familiar with and connected to, and because it is relatively comfortable, very safe, and perfectly suited for do-it-yourself tourism. That last point is particularly important for us because we have little interest in being guided through a visit anywhere. We don't have any interest in experiencing some sort of made-for-tourists tour from the windows of a bus - our route being carefully chosen to pass only the most attractive areas while the places people really live remain safely out of sight. We couldn't afford the extra cost involved in trips like that, anyway. Planning and executing the trip ourselves makes the overall experience much more educational and rewarding. A simple test a place has to pass for us to feel comfortable visiting might be the car rental test; We have to be able to rent a reliable car and drive it anywhere without worrying about getting lost to the point of putting ourselves in danger.

But that does put some serious constraints on where in the world we would consider visiting. There are many places, particularly across Africa and Asia, where there are potentially fascinating places to see but little realistic way to do it effectively or safely without either being guided or being sequestered from real local life by staying in places locals would never go. I know there are ways to partly overcome these challenges. I'm always running across stories of people having a wonderful time visiting places you never even considered would be well-suited for tourism. But we have a limited budget and young children, too. I wouldn't know where to begin planning a trip to China, Thailand, Tanzania or Madagascar. Maybe several years from now when I know more about these more exotic options, the children are old enough to be independent (or are too busy to join us at all) and some of these places have more tourism infrastructure in place, then we will give these locations more serious thought.

In the mean time, in addition to Australia and New Zealand, there are still many other places I would like to visit outside of Europe. Many places in Central America have become mini tourism hot spots recently. Costa Rica seems to have evolved into one giant eco-tourism resort.

But the place my curiosity keeps coming back to is South America. Our neighbor to the south that you don't even have to cross an ocean to get to, is almost completely forgotten as a place of interest for most Americans. It seems to reside in a sort of tourism no-man's-land. North America is home. Africa is more dark and mysterious. Asia is more exotic. Australia is more familiar. Europe is more classic. There is something for everyone in those five choices. Perhaps South America simply lacks a tourism identity.

But from what little I know (and it is very little, indeed) South America seems to have a great deal to offer, including many wonders of nature, deep history, and interesting cities. Most intriguing, though, is that it seems to be populated by people going about their lives in relative peace, comfort and safety (at least compared to many other exotic locations) and yet their lives and lifestyles rarely ever enter our consciousness. I'll bet we know less about Peru than we do India; less about Argentina than New Zealand; less about Chile than Kenya. Why is that? It sparks my curiosity....

Undecided and confused...

I have been reading guide books for the last several weeks, but I am not one step closer to figuring out where we might go next. I am torn.

My initial impulse was to focus on Australia (and perhaps New Zealand) as a way to take a break from the common attractions of Europe. I have noticed that the typical visits to castles, cathedrals, and museums full of millenia-old artifacts has gotten somewhat less interesting over the last four trips. With the prospect of visiting Italy on the horizon, I don't want sites like that to get glossed over as merely "same-old, same-old..."

But the more I read about Australia and the Queensland/Great Barrier Reef area (where we would be likely to spend most of our time keeping warm during their "winter") the more I wonder about what we would do and how we would do it. We have developed a set of expectations for trips like these and Australia does not fit into those expectations. There are rain forests there, but how do you visit a rain forest effectively? There are some great beaches there, but how much time can you spend sitting on a beach? There are amazing islands to visit and dives at the reef, but those activities are terribly expensive to say nothing of the risks involved taking a family of non to barely adequate swimmers diving in a sea full of strange creatures.

Visiting Australia would be logistically awkward as well. We would be required to fly into Sydney. Then, once we have seen the city, we would have to drive some 1,400 miles to get to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef. Worse, that drive is along a route that would take us past almost every tourist trap in Australia. I am envisioning 1,400 miles worth of strip malls and traffic moving infuriatingly slow. Then, of course, we would have to backtrack at least as far as Brisbane (900 miles) to fly home.

I have done some preliminary looking into lodgings and have discovered that, aside from youth hostels, the other options are not particularly economical for a family of five. After our hostel-filled trip this past year, it would be really nice to not focus on hostel stays next year. Also, the hostel web sites there have a distinctly college-age-party vibe that you don't find so much in Europe and I would rather avoid.

All other things being equal, New Zealand actually seems more appealing to me, if for no other reason than because it is more off the beaten track and it's sights are distributed all around the two large islands and not focused along one long beachfront. Unfortunately, their winter is really winter, with temps in the south approaching freezing. I don't think we could enjoy that, nor do I think that's the best time for a once-in-a-lifetime visit.

On top of it all, even with cutting every possible corner it would still costs at least $2,000 more than any of our previous trips. For a guaranteed fantastic time, that would be worth it. The problem is, at this point, I don't feel that it would be a guaranteed fantastic time.

Then there is Italy. We will go there sometime in the next three years. I have read the guide books. I pretty much know exactly how I would like to do it and I am confident we would find good and affordable lodgings. I am certain I could keep costs in line with past trips while doing everything we would want to see and do. I just don't know how wise it is to either see this great area while Joshua is so young (he would be 8) that he might not remember it well, or as trip number five in a row of European castles, cathedrals, museums and Roman ruins. I fear some of the magic could be dulled.

I have read up on Ireland & Scotland as well. That seems like a pleasant trip. But that holds many of the same pitfalls already mentioned about Italy. How much mystical magic can we feel looking at Ireland's piles of 1000-year-old rocks when that's what we have done the last four trips in a row? As pleasant as the trip might be, I don't think it has as much of an upside as the trip to Italy would. So if we were going to take the 5-consecutive-years-seeing-Europe plunge, I would rather it be to Italy.

This all begs the question "Is there somewhere else in the world we could go and see something amazing while staying safe and comfortable and not breaking the bank?" I don't know. Any ideas?...

What's Next?

We try to keep next year's destination a secret as long as possible. Plus, making concrete plans at this point just detracts from the fresh memories of the trip we just took. So I can't (and won't) go into specifics here. But here are the possibilities (purposefully not in any meaningful order);

The greatest hits of the USA: I have to admit I've felt a little guilty lately about the fact that it has been quite a while since we have taken a great American road trip. We did that many years in a row between 1993 (before children) and 2004 (when the children were much younger) - so much, in fact, that we ran out of places we wanted to go. But time has passed, and Joshua and Shelby at this point have little or no memory of any of those trips. It seems a little odd that Joshua has seen Budapest, but not New York; Prague, but not Washington D.C. Whether it's next year or some time after, we have to give some serious thought to seeing more of the great old USA. I wonder if it's possible to do 48 states in 48 days? Hmmm....

Ireland & The Scottish Highlands: This would likely be Michelle's choice. I'll admit I would enjoy this, too. But it seems so laid back compared to our recent trips - a nice contrast, perhaps - but I fear too laid back. We were in Scotland in 2007, but only around Edinburgh. So although it wouldn't technically be repeating any previous trip (which I definitely don't want to do yet with so many other places I want to see in the world), it would be culturally pretty close to repeating our 2007 Great Britain trip.

Italy: This is the elephant in the room, so to speak. We have not been there yet and it has always been #1 on my list of places to go. We purposely postponed this trip until the children were old enough to really soak it in. Are they old enough now, or do we wait another year or two? That is the question. There is no question that we are going, eventually (and soon). It's just a question of exactly when to pull the trigger.

Australia: As much as we love the history in Europe, it would be absurd to claim you are a world traveler without breaking away from Europe once in a while. I would love to see some of Australia (I say some because it's way too big to cover it all). There are two main obstacles, though; one is the airfare - typically 50% more than Europe, the other is seasonal - we have to travel in the summer, which means their winter, which means either we're chilly or we restrict ourselves to the more tropical Queensland/barrier reef area. One big selling point would be that it would be a great contrast to all the castles and cathedrals in Europe - a nice way to cleanse the pallet after four years of 1000-year history - before starting a new cycle of European visits.

Costa Rica: Would also be a great anti-Europe trip, and would be quite a bit cheaper - a great alternative if we run into trouble saving money for travel next year. Just how hot does it get there in the summer? Are all seasons the same so close to the equator?

Other: There are many, many more places we would love to go (In fact, a year ago I was reading guide books on Japan thinking that would be an exciting alternative to Europe). Among these, here are other top contenders: Spain/Portugal/Morocco, Croatia & nearby, Greece and Turkey, Brazil, New Zealand, Alaska and Hawaii. I'm pretty sure that we will make it to all these places eventually, but I don't think any of them are very likely for 2011.

*---*---*---*---*---*---*

I'm not sure what is next for this blog. I've gotten used to writing every night and I would hate to break the habit now. But obviously, there is only so much that can be written about this year's trip and travel in general. I will give it some thought. But no doubt, this will not be the final entry. I will definitely be back, and soon. But maybe not tomorrow. Keep checking back, faithful readers....

A Look Back, part 3

Blogging was new to our trip experience this year, but so was carrying around a laptop computer, looking for wifi connections, and carrying around two iPod Touches along with smaller video iPods. This was by far our most intensively electronics-filled trip. How did that go?

For starters, I can't say enough in praise of video iPods for children. Sure, in an ideal world, those boring hours in a car or train would be filled by reading good books or doing other brain-enhancing activities. But remember, this is a 5-week trip and we are packing light. There is no way we could have carried enough stuff to fill those down times without leaning hard on the entertainment value of those iPods. As it was, the children went through about 10 sizable books (between them), so they did read a lot. But they also watched a lot of the movies we had on those iPods. When you need to spend three hours in the car with three children packed shoulder to shoulder in the back seat, those iPods are priceless for keeping the peace and making things sane for the adults up front. Some of those drives were so peaceful you hardly knew there were children in the car.

As for the iPod Touches; until last December, I had never used one (we like electronics, but we're not on the cutting edge, either). My first impression was that the 'net wasn't convenient enough to use on the Touch, so I was unimpressed. But after getting more familiar with the various "apps", I came to understand that they had tremendous value in addition to the ability to email and (awkwardly) search the Internet. We monitored the weather, exchange rates, and news from home. I took photos of the guide book pages we needed and put them on the Touch - over 700 pages viewable as photos on a cell-phone sized device, freeing my hands from looking like a dork carrying a guide book with me everywhere. But my favorite use for the Touch was the "Maps" app. While using wifi at home, I did a map route search for each of the legs of our trip that we had to drive. I then took a "screen-shot" of each step of the route. That gave us precise, and very detailed step-by-step instruction for how to get from point A to point B every day. We left our big floppy map at home and just used the Touch for maps, even without mobile wifi. As a back-up I took some photos of the relevant atlas pages we would have used and had those available on Touch photos in case we got off track. But it was amazing how often a drive from once city to another went exactly as the map app said it would, down to the exact wording of the exit sign we were looking for.

The key to the electronics all working seamlessly - the "mother ship", if you will - was the Apple Macbook Air laptop. It provided all the storage we needed (1000 photos, hours worth of music, and 60 full-length movies) for the iPods, all the storage we needed for photos we took on the trip (no more worrying about if we had enough SD memory cards or if we would lose them), and a fully-functional, full-sized, yet extremely lightweight computer. That computer was capable of surfing the web on a full-size screen, typing on a full-size keyboard, and keeping track of our expenses every step of the way. It was like having our home-office on the road with us, and it hardly took up any space at all. In fact, having it allowed us to leave many other papers at home plus gave us peace of mind knowing that we had every scrap of trip-related information at our fingertips and full connectivity to people back home.

The only glitch in this system was the availability of wireless Internet. I was surprised how often it was provided for free at our lodgings (18 of 34 nights) or for a fee (another 8 nights). But I was also surprised how often it was not available on the streets. I was led to believe that in urban areas you would be able to tap into a wifi hot spot just by walking down the street looking for a connection. When we were looking, we had no success with that approach at all. We wound up using McDonald's a couple of times, an upscale hotel lobby a couple of times, and a glitzy Apple store in Munich when we needed wifi on the run.

On future trips I fully expect to continue refining our electronics usage to make information storage and access even more wide-ranging, yet compact and efficient.

Speaking of future trips, that will be the subject of tomorrow's blog...

A Look Back, part 2

Here's a quick (I hope) look back at each of our stops;

Amsterdam: I heard so many people sing the praises of Amsterdam that I had imagined it as some sort of canal-filled nirvana. It didn't quite live up to that expectation. But it was nice enough, and unique when you consider the canals, bicycles and the red-light district. It's not a place you forget. But since we had seen cities on water before (like Stockholm, which is gorgeous) and we weren't interested in buying sex or marijuana, I just found it nice, rather than amazing.

Brussles & Bruges: Brussles "Grand Place" central square was breathtaking - worth the bother of stopping by itself. But the rest of Brussles was uninspiring. Bruges was a delightful place to spend a day and two nights. Seeing most of the sights only takes half a day, so the bike trip we took was the perfect addition to the sights. To spend more time there you would really have to like lingering or parking yourself somewhere comfortable and reading a good book.

Bacharach & the Rhine: We will remember the hostel in the castle in Bacharach for a long time. It was special. The two days and three nights we spent there was just the right amount of time for a quick look at the villages and castles on the Rhine & Mosel rivers. A person could easily fill another day or two by seeing more villages than we did, but we have learned from past experience that towns like that all start to look alike pretty quickly. The walk from the village of Moselkern, through the woods, to the Burg Eltz casle is a highlight that we will remember for a long time.

Rothenburg: Every bit as cute as it's reputation, but a place that you could easily see in a full day and two nights. We spent the full day away in Nürnberg (which was interesting, but not quite interesting enough, in retrospect to have spent an entire day there) and two evenings in Rothenburg. It felt like we didn't have quite enough time there. It's a great place to just stroll aimlessly. The night watchman's tour was a little cheesy, but delightfully fun. If I had it to do over again, I would sadly have to delete the day trip to Nürnberg and simply spend a bit more time lingering in Rothenburg.

Füssen & Mad Ludwig's castles: I actually came expecting to find the famous castles (Neuschwanstein, in particular) to be too touristy and over-hyped to live up to their reputations. But I was pleasantly surprised. All three were fascinating in their own ways. In particular, the walk up to Neuschwanstein, past it to Mary's bridge, and beyond that up the mountainside, was a highlight of the trip for me. It was like a fairytale. Okay, it had almost no relevance to real castle life, historically. But if you can accept it for what it was, it was delightful. The area around Füssen is full of nicely low-key sights and is a great place to call home base for several days. If the family had been more enthusiastic about hiking, it would have been worth spending a couple of extra days there, but they were not, so the five nights we had were adequate.

Salzburg: There is no question Salzburg has charm. Just hearing the bells ring every hour - sounding just like the opening scene on "The Sound Of Music" warms the heart. But without the movie connection, Salzburg would be worth just a short stop. There just isn't a lot to see or do in the town itself that is exceptional (though all of it is quite pleasant). So our two nights and one full day was adequate, I thought. Seeing Hitler's Eagle's Nest the afternoon before was a memorable experience - not for the "nest" itself, which is now just a restaurant with a great view - but for the whole switchback, mountain climbing experience topped with a view at the top that absolutely takes your breath away. Forget Hitler. It was worth it just for the view.

Vienna: This may have been my biggest disappointment. Not that Vienna was unpleasant, but we found the old town area to be disappointing historically. There simply were not enough architectural "wows" to match my expectations. Yes, there were palaces. But we had seen palaces before, so we chose to skip these. There is only so much ostentatiousness a person can take. We stayed in an area not far from the ring, but so full of graffiti and "grittiness" that I never would have guessed it could have been part of such a highly regarded city. To be fair, I expect that if I lived there, I would grow to like it a great deal more because I would know where to look for the little treasures. But for a tourist getting a quick overview, Vienna (without the palaces) was forgettable.

Budapest: Despite our overbearing B&B hosts, we found Budapest to be worth the extra time we spent there. The baths were a wonderful experience. The castle hill/fisherman's bastion area behind our B&B is a place we returned to each night and will stay in our memories for a long time. The daytrip to Szentendre was only mediocre and in retrospect, it would have been better to trade it for the ability to spend one night in Eger, instead of the long but rushed day trip we took there. We had no time to stroll Eger and I regretted that.

Krakow: This may have been the biggest surprise of the trip for me. Maybe it was just because I came into it with lower expectations, but I found it charming and welcoming. It was also a very good value. The hostel we stayed in was an incredible value (providing free meals, wifi and laundry!) and a fun place to crash for the night. The old town is small, though. So it does not take a great deal of time to see. The three full days we had there with one devoted to Auschwitz/Birkenau was perfect.

Prague: In the Prague blog posts I went into some detail about how Prague seemed to be too touristy, so I won't repeat myself here. Prague is lovely - among the most visually appealing cities I have ever seen. It is wonderful eye-candy. I just wish it had more soul. It seemed too much like one of the stops at Epcot Center in Disney World.

Cesky Krumlov: A fantastic way to see rural Czech Republic. The town is adorable. The food is good and inexpensive, and the river is a great float. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and a great way to cleanse the pallet between big city visits. I would not recommend the Krumlov House Hostel, though. Stay somewhere else.

Munich: To be fair, we didn't stay long enough in Munich to see the city fairly. Also, being at the end of the trip, we were not in the mood to see the traditional tourist sights. We just wanted to relax. The "English Garden" bike ride was very nice, and the pedestrian zone passing the town square and glockenspiel was a fun place to hang out in the evening and hear great street musicians. But the city (having been heavily damaged during WWII) lacked historical charm. Unlike Prague, however, it was a city with a soul. It wasn't just for tourists. That was good to see.

Tomorrow I will add my final thoughts and then it's time to look forward, not back...

A Look Back, part 1

It's barely been 48 hours since our return and we're still not on central standard time. So maybe it's a little early to look back and judge how things went in detail. But I want to share some random thoughts anyway;

We always plan things early and in some detail, but this year was even more so. The trip was about 80% locked in six months before we got on the plane. That may sound a little extreme to some, but with children and all the changes of location involved, we wanted to remove as much uncertainty as we could from the trip. I have to give myself some credit for the fact that everything that could be planned ahead went pretty much exactly as planned. What we did on day 32 was exactly what we had planned months earlier. That's not to say everything was perfect, but the planning payed off.

That said, There were a few too many transitions on this trip. We stayed in twelve different locations. I thought that since we stayed at least two nights in each, and at least three in most, that each location would get the attention it deserved and we wouldn't feel rushed. To that extent, I was pretty much on target. I can't think of a location that I would have wanted to stay in longer than we did, except perhaps Amsterdam. One more day there would have been useful. But what I didn't expect was that by the time we got to location number eight, the memories of location number one began to get fuzzy. By the time we got to the end of the trip, much of the first half seemed like so long ago it might have been part of a different trip entirely.

It's would be easy to blame the length of the trip for this. But five weeks was only a few days longer than our trip to France last year and that trip did not feel too long. Why the difference? The month in France included three one-week stays. Although there were several other short stops, the three one-week stays gave a greater sense of stability and cemented the memories better.

It would be easy then to blame the number of stops, and to wish we had cut a few. But which ones? We could have cut out all of the stops after Salzburg and not gone farther east, but those stops were among the most interesting and meaningful since they are less commonly visited. Not seeing them on this trip when we were so close by would mean not seeing them at all for at least several more years. I can't go so far as to say I regret adding them to the itinerary. I think we made the best of the opportunity we had. If we got a little tired at the end and the memories got a little muddled, that may have simply been the price we had to pay. There are too many other places in the world we want to see to say we should have broken this into two or three trips instead of one.

I think some of the fatigue was simply caused by the weather. Amsterdam was a challenge because it was so cool and gloomy that it was not pleasant to linger outdoors. Then within a span of two days temps rose 25-30 degrees, the sun came out and the heat became borderline oppressive for most of the next 30 days. It takes a toll, and that is nothing that can be planned for or controlled.

More tomorrow...

Just The Bill, Please...

Before we get down to serious business, let me comment on the curious European restaurant tradition of making the customer practically beg for the bill. Oh, if you ask for it directly, it will arrive soon enough. But you have to ask. And that requires that you first find your server and catch their attention at a rare moment when they are not busy. If you don't ask for it, it may never arrive. The situation seems to stem from the way they approach dining out - as an event more than a meal meant to fill an empty stomach. So the event could last hours. That's fine for the locals who have no sightseeing goals. But when a family of five needs to follow some kind of timeline in order to see some sights, a three-hour meal is not an option. So we have to ask for the bill. We need to move on, and so do the faithful blog readers. Here is the bill;

(for comparison, see the blog "Expenses, part 2" in May)

Central Europe, 2010, 35 days, $1=.79 Euro, 224 HUF, 20 CK, 3.2 PZL

Airfare: 4,250

Ground Transport: 2,250

Lodging (34 nights): 4,070

Food: 1,940

Entertainment/Incidentals: 1,640

Subtotal: 14,150

House Sitter: +350

Away Savings: -1,200

Final Total: $13,300 ($380/day)

Airfare: We actually bought our tickets way back in late October. We saw that IcelandAir had fares for the open-jaw Amsterdam/Munich cities for a net $850 per person. The other airlines were over $100 more pp so it seemed more likely that IcelandAir would raise their fares soon to come closer to matching the norm, than any chance of fares getting lower. Besides, $850 was a good price. You don't want to play the waiting game with any fares under $1,000 during the high season. If you see one, take it. It proved wise since airfares only rose from that point onward. By March those same tickets were $300 more pp.

Ground Transport: We used a roughly 50/50 combination of car rentals and trains. The car rental prices we got were pretty ordinary. We saved a bit by paying for it right away instead of at pick-up time. We also saved a lot by renting the smallest car we could fit in and not buying extra insurance. Many people insist upon the piece of mind that comes with the insurance but that can almost match the cost of the car. So we rely on the credit card coverage and drive cautiously. As for trains; it was tempting to consider rail passes of some sort. But some further research confirmed that we could spend less simply buying point-to-point tickets. We could save even more by planning ahead and buying then as soon as they become available online. We got three legs of our journey this way, each for only $52 for the five of us. That's a steal. We payed much larger sums for the two overnight train legs in the east, which we could not buy ahead of time. But that cost was offset by the fact that they also served as our lodgings for those two nights.

Lodging: We kept our lodging costs very low (only $120/night) by using quite a few hostels and some carefully chosen B&B's, small hotels, and rentals that had "family" rooms that could accommodate all five of us. Any time you have to get two rooms, the costs soar. So we booked most of our lodgings six months ahead of our departure to ensure we could find those rare rooms for five. We had mixed luck with the hostels. Some were fantastic (Bacharach and Krakow), some were only mediocre (Bruges and Rothenburg), and some were questionable (Vienna and Cesky Krumlov). But all provided at least decent accommodation for a good price, and were family-friendly, too.

Food: In the past we have saved a great deal of money on food by preparing our own food in week-long cottage rentals. This time we were hampered by the fact that we only had one 5-day rental where it was practical to make our own hot meals. Instead, we made sure to eat a good, filling breakfast at each lodging, and then to either eat a small, snacky lunch or prepare a picnic lunch with grocery store food. Then we would try to find a reasonably priced place for a sit-down casual dinner. We managed to keep food costs to $55/day for the whole family. Pretty good considering we ate at quite a few more restaurants this year than in the past. Food was quite a bargain in Poland and rural Czech Republic. Prices were reasonable in most of Germany, too.

Entertainment/Incidentals: There are not many steps you can take to keep prices low in this category. After all, you are there to see and do things, so you are going to have to pay admission fees. Fortunately, most of the places we had to pay to visit either allowed children of a certain age for free or had "family" rates that were only slightly more than the price for two adults. We also enjoy seeing the sights that are free like (some) churches, parks and city squares and markets.

In Total: We benefited from good currency exchange rates. If the rates had been more typical of the last several years, we would have spent about $1,000 more. We were fortunate to keep the total cost of this year's trip the same as last year's even though it was five days longer (and even a bit under the costs of our trip to Scandinavia, even though this year's trip was 14 days longer). So overall, this year's trip was the best value, by far, when you calculate costs on a per-day basis. I'm pretty proud of that. It would not have been at all difficult to spend double the amount we spent simply by making different choices. Different, not fancier. Certainly, if fancy is your goal, the sky is the limit with costs.

Tomorrow I plan to do a blog entry about our overall impressions of the places we saw, what our favorite things were and what we think we will remember the most...

We're Home!

We’re home.

Our last day was a fairly ordinary travel day. We lingered in our hotel room until we were required to check out (10:30) because then we would have to deal with our baggage and doing anything while lugging the bags around would be too much. All we could manage was to gather at the plaza one last time for the glockenspiel show at 11:00. While we were there, I noticed the dragon sculpture I had not noticed before (middle photo) on the side of the city hall. These little charming surprises were all over central Munich. Then we headed for the U-Bahn and the airport. The airport is a surprising distance from the city. There must have been ten miles of farm fields before we reached airport – a very modern, clean, sprawling, and efficient facility (bottom photo).

Our IcelandAir flight left on time and our transfer of planes in Iceland went as planned. It is very odd to be so familiar with the little Keflavik airport. This was our sixth transfer there in three years. We know where the cool wooden Viking ship model is, where the bathrooms are, and where to get the best view of the unusual and bleak scenery surrounding it. We only fly IcelandAir because it happens to serve our local airport and because they tend to cost about 10% less than the major carriers if you buy early. But they also are a very efficiently run little airline and we have never had a single delay or glitch in any of our flights. We even recognize some of the flight attendants!

Coming home from a long trip is such an odd feeling those first few hours. There is a certain joy and relief at being around everything familiar. But you are also severely jet-lagged. We came home at about 6:30 local time, but in our heads it was 1:30 in the morning. Of course we didn’t sleep at all – partly because it is never dark on the plane ride back and partly because of the excitement to be home.

Then we had to deal with the immediate need of getting something to eat. We had nothing but munchies for the last 14 hours and we had almost nothing in the house. Meanwhile, everyone was doing their bit of unpacking, starting the laundry and trying to reunite with our neurotic cat, Simba, while also trying not to freak him out. Just when he was starting to accept his new life with the quiet house-sitter, suddenly the loud family of five returns! While we did all of this we also tried to avoid being noticed by our neighbors. As much as we like them and love talking about travel, the last thing we wanted to get into under the circumstances, was any “So how was your trip?!?” conversations. What do you say, beyond “fine” or “great” when you are exhausted and just want to get your life back to normal as quickly as possible?

Tomorrow will be the day to collect the mail from the post office and start making phone calls to people and letting ourselves be seen outside. Tomorrow I will also do a blog entry talking about how the costs of the trip worked out…

English Garden

This was our last day of our summer adventure, 2010. Tomorrow we have a full day spent getting home, so that day doesn’t really count. Once we are home, I will do a few more blog entries with some reflection on what went well and what didn’t, what the final cost tally was and how that compared with other trips we have taken. It’s always good to reflect on what you might have done differently if you had known then what you know now. It’s good to do that right away, while the memories are still fresh, but it’s also good to consider that question after some time has passed, and the mental toll the trip has taken has faded.

Today we wanted to keep things open and casual. So we slept in a little, had a huge breakfast, and walked to a bike rental shop we had a brochure for. Then we biked to the “English Gardens” – Europe’s largest city park. It truly is huge, and the edge is located just a few blocks from the city center. We biked there for two hours (with just a couple of short breaks) and hardly saw a single building. It was just trees, streams (top photo) and meadows for as far as the eye could see. There were plenty of people there, but in a park that size, even thousands hardly seem like a crowd at all.

Apparently the Germans are rather fond of the “natural” lifestyle and enjoy being unclothed outdoors. The guidebooks warned of naked locals sunning themselves in the park and sure enough, there were a few. We even ran across a small heard of sheep (middle photo) and stopped for a break at the Chinese Tower restaurant area (bottom).

After returning our bikes, we were a little tired and hot, so we went back to our hotel to rest a little before going out again in time to see the Glockenspiel chime and find some food. One final stroll around Munich was all we had time for before coming back to do a final packing of our stuff, including finding ways to pack the childrens’ souvenirs so they would be safe. At least our little one-quart baggies of liquids will be a lot lighter on the way home!

I think we all miss home a little. Five weeks is a long time to be away. We used to think three weeks was an exceptionally long trip. But none of us has suffered from much homesickness either. The children spent very little time pining for the conveniences and familiar things of home. They new this was a grand adventure and that they should be getting as much out of it as they could. We will all be happy to see home again – our cat, friends and relatives, familiar food and creature comforts. But we will also be sad to see the adventure end…

Our Last Location

(I am sitting here at 10PM in front of a giant Apple store in the center of Munich - the only place I am aware of in town with a free wifi connection, and it's blazingly fast, too. Bless you, Apple)

The little rural Czech town of Cesky Krumlov has a train station with service that ultimately leads to cities in every direction. Oddly, though, the station is a 30-minute walk from the town center. Also, the service requires you to begin by taking local trains that travel slowly and stop at every nearby town. The end result of all this is that most people avoid taking the train to or from there. So many area hotels and local entrepreneurs have started up shuttle bus businesses that will drive people to the major cities within a few hours drive or the 90-minute drive to Linz, Austria where you can catch a fast train to just about anywhere. That is what we did.

Our Czech shuttle-bus driver was having a bad morning. He actually called our hostel where he was supposed to pick us up at the front door, to tell us he would be two hours late. When we told him we would miss our train if he was, he grumbled and said he would be there shortly. He was, but he was clearly unhappy about it. A while later he calmed down enough to tell us what his troubles were and the ride became more pleasant. In short, a combination of vehicle troubles and mis-schedules had made him want to make one less road trip that day, but he did it anyway when he found out our timing was critical.

After about an hour we crossed the border into Austria. We saw the now-defunct border crossing stations and our driver joked that the roads were already better, the houses larger and “we sometimes say even the weather is nicer” when you cross the border. He had a point. The Czech Republic (as well as the other formerly-Communist-controlled countries) have done remarkably well in just 20 years of freedom, but you don’t have to look hard to find rough areas. It was immediately clear after crossing the border into Austria that there was more money to spend on personal property and public infrastructure.

Our train trip from Linz to Munich was very pleasant (on an amazingly smooth and quiet modern train) and we arrived by 3PM, found our hotel quickly, and checked in. I then asked the family “Do you want to rest here for a while, or do you want to go out and have a look around”? The answer was a pretty emphatic “Rest”. You can tell we are near the end of our trip and the tolerance level for the typical sights is wearing thin. Almost everyone napped and we didn’t get out until 6PM. Not much accomplished today except changing locations and getting some rest, but that’s okay at this point. The top photo is of the children playing games at the communal table in our funky hostel in Cesky Krumlov. The bottom photo is of the town hall in Munich with it's famous glockenspiel in the center.

Tomorrow we have our only full day in Munich and I think it’s going to be another warm one. We may keep things pretty low key then, too. We didn’t plan anything, knowing that we would want the flexibility to do only whatever we had the energy for. We’ll see what happens…

Cesky Krumlov

Cesky Krumlov is a delightful little town in the southern Czech area called “Bohemia”. But before I say anything else, I have to admit that it is a very touristy town. Since I complained about Prague’s character in my previous entries, I can’t very well let little Cesky Krumlov off the hook completely. The old town center here is 100% tourist zone, too. With lodgings, restaurants and shops filling every building. But here the effect is a little different. First of all, you don’t have to look far to find where the locals live – it’s just a few blocks away, up the hill in the c.1970’s apartment buildings. Secondly, you have to consider what the alternative would be if there were no tourism here. Likely the town would have faded to almost nothing years ago. Also, there is no “crush” of tourists here. The number of tourists is a manageable amount. There are no traffic jams of bodies on the narrow streets like Prague. Here, you still feel like you are in a place that is a little bit off the beaten track. So, all things considered, the buzz of tourists here is not bothersome.

And it doesn’t hurt that the town is as charming as can be – but charming in a way that is natural and real, not prettied-up by a “what will make the tourists happy” city council design committee. The look of the buildings and streets is delightfully quirky.

We spent the morning at the castle. Even though the interior was closed because it was a “blue” Monday (common all over Europe – if a place is closed one day a week, it is often Monday), the courtyards and grounds were open. Although not lavish, they were pleasant and interesting. In the back of the castle gardens was an outdoor theatre set with a strangely modern and circular stadium-seating set-up. Looking more closely, we figured out why – the seating is designed to rotate (like those rotating restaurants on top of tall buildings) so that instead of changing scenes on a stage, the scenery literally changes as the audience rotates. In one place, there is a building that can function as a set interior. In another, a clearing in the woods. In another, an outdoor set.

After a light lunch at our hostel, we set out to do the main activity of our visit here – canoeing down the Vltava River. Rafting, would be a more accurate description, since we all fit together in an inflatable raft, but you get the idea. The day started out quite cloudy and chilly, but by the time we set off for our 3-hour tour (think Gilligan’s Island theme song here) the weather was perfect. The river was calm enough that we didn’t have to worry about safety too much, but swift enough – even with some mild “rapids” and lots of curves – to be interesting. The children had a blast and we returned pretty tired from rowing and exposure to the sun and fresh air. It was good to get out and see the countryside. There were times when we didn’t see another soul or sign of humans anywhere. We even saw a deer in the woods.

I should say a few words about our accommodations. The Krumlov House Hostel is one of those small, independent hostels like the one we stayed in in Krakow; that is, simply a small-business venture. You buy a big apartment (like in Krakow) or a house (like here) and turn the bedrooms into hostel rooms and the kitchen, dining & living rooms into common rooms. Put a receptionist near the front door and you have yourself a private hostel. The prices are very reasonable and the atmosphere is charmingly homey. In Krakow, however, at least your room was completely private, with a lock and key. Here, the Krumlov house is run a little like a hippie commune. There are no interior locks and everything is so casual that it verges on shabby. It is alright for a couple of nights, But if I had it to do over again, I would choose a different place.

After a hearty traditional Czech dinner, we walked up to a hill behind our hostel to take in the sunset over the town with the rolling hills in the background. It was a short stay, but a worthwhile one. Tomorrow we move on to our final location...

Rain, Gardens and Krumlov

Finally the weather broke - in a big way. It rained last night and much of the morning, but gently. The temperature dropped about 30 degrees, though. We actually wore pants today. Despite the rain, we had a great day. The first half was spent in Prague and the last half in the southern Czech town of Cesky Krumlov.

We spent the drizzly morning in Prague looking at St. Nicholas church (top photo & right outside our front door) and the palace gardens (middle photo). The gardens were interesting in the way they stepped down the steep hillside. They were mainly green (could have used some more color, in my opinion) but it was sort of enhanced by the effect of the water making everything glisten. We had about four hours to kill before our bus left town and so we had the rare opportunity to linger. It's a very different experience to be at an enjoyable site and be thinking "I wonder how long I can make this last" rather than "I wonder how quickly we can move on to the next thing?" I wish it were practical to approach things that way more often, but it's not.

The little Czech town of Cesky Krumlov was relatively important about 400 years ago, and then it's power and wealth faded, and the town was mostly forgotten and left in tact. This has made it a wonderful time-in-bottle sort of place (much the same story as Bruges, Belgium).

We got there on a bus. It was an odd experience. The bus was very modern and included an attendant serving drinks and free wifi. We had trouble finding finding free wifi service of any kind in Bavaria and here we were in the Czech Republic on a bus surfing the net!

The town of Cesky Krumlov is absolutely adorable. Our hostel is a quirky, hippy sort of place with a carved wooden dragon on the front door (bottom). We'll have more on the town and the hostel tomorrow. It's late and we're all pretty tired...