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.

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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…