Part 2

My wife, Rosita, and started planning a trip to Europe late in 2016. We decided to go to Germany, Switzerland and Italy. We went to Italy back in 2015 and I wanted to go to Germany on my next trip. Two things I wanted to experience in Germany were beer and sausage and this is where both were invented. I had beer and sausage for breakfast once in the Frankfurt airport on a previous trip to Spain. Even though these 2 things were on my bucket list, I wanted to go back and do it right. We also wanted too go back to Italy since we really enjoyed a previous trip to there. Well Switzerland and the Alps are between these countries so we decided to stop and look around since we would be traveling though the country anyway. I know regional carriers have some cheap flights in Europe, but for now I am hooked on European train travel. I am sure you have somewhere you want to go. All of us have places on our bucket list that we want to see. This will make it more interesting and make the planning process more fun. As my oldest son had been saying to us for several years before we went to Maine. He had heard his mother express a desire to visit Maine. He Said “If you want to go to Maine, what is the big deal. You buy a plane ticket and go to Maine. Why don’t you just go”. Now If you have jobs and kids it is a lot more complicated but if you want to go somewhere, go. Get up off of your butt and make it happen.

For our trip we decided to spend a few days in the Rhine River Valley area of Germany. Since we were going to go to Italy we might as well stay a night or 2 in Switzerland. On a previous trip to Italy and after we had everything booked, several people had told us that you have to go spend some time in Florence, Italy and that it was their favorite place in Italy. Since we had destinations already planned we decided to save Florence for the next trip and now this is the next trip. Also we spent 1 full day in Venice and enjoyed it much better than we thought we would.

So to get started I made a few bullet points on what I wanted to do while in Europe

1. fly into Frankfurt, Germany
2. Find a nearby town on the Rhine or Mosel Rive and go there by train
3. Spend 3 or four nights
4. Take a cruise on the Rhine River
5. Eat some German Sausage and Drink some German beer
6. Take a train to a town in Switzerland and spend 1 or 2 nights
7. Take a train to Florence Italy and spend 4 to 5 nights there
8. Take a train to Venice Italy and spend 3 or 4 nights there
9. Fly home to New Orleans

I booked everything and I will go over each step on how I went about making plans and booking all aspects of the trip. Then while on the trip I will then go over how the trip is going, what parts are successful and what things I did that might need some fine tuning for the next trip. I will document all expenses on the trip and see how close I am to my $8,000 budget.

The first thing I wanted do was to decide on a time to go. My wife and I are empty nesters so we like to go to Europe during the shoulder season. The shoulder season is between the busy summer season and the winter season. We like the Sept, Oct time because kids are back in school and tourist sites and travel is less crowded. My day job is a lot harder to get away from in the spring than the fall season. Another thing for me to consider was the college football schedule. I am an avid Mississippi State fan and Alumni and have football season tickets. Since I like to schedule the time of the trip about a year out and The SEC schedule comes out in the fall a year in advance and I also like to spend 2 weeks overseas since it takes so long to get there, so I try to find 3 weekends with no home games. I found 2 road games and an open date on 3 consecutive weekends. Next I did the obligatory checking with the bosses. Nothing at work is probably going to be scheduled this far out, but when something is planned they will remember that you did ask first and should make it easier to leave with less guilt. We went the last week in September and the first week in October.

Next will be Part 3, finding and booking airline flights

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