Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 2015
Before the Tour
After settling on a tour, we got to the hardest part of traveling - the waiting!
We get so excited about our trips that we are like kids waiting for Christmas morning! We pass the time by absorbing any information we can find that relates to our destination. We spent many date nights in Barnes and Noble pouring over language books and guidebooks. We watched the Rick Steves' episodes on the regions we were traveling to. One of the best things we did was read Rick Steves' Europe 101: Art and History for the Traveler. Somehow we must have been sleeping through our art classes in college, so we very much appreciated the refresher! It made everything we saw on the tour so much more meaningful​. We also bought Europe through the Back Door to learn about practical things such as how to handle money and what the policies are on tipping in Europe. We scoured the travel forums for advice on things to do and see, as well as the best ways to get around before our tour. We practiced our German together (and that was the blind leading the blind, let me tell you!).
We got so excited about our tour that we threw caution into the wind and decided to add on 4 days before the trip to see Paris. Why not? After all, everything in Europe seems so close because of the trains. So we started practicing our French in addition to German (and we thought German was hard!). We bought rail tickets from Paris to Trier for the start of the tour.
The most exciting day before the tour was when we got the tour packet with our guidebooks and language books. Soon after we got a list of our hotels, so we could look them up online and get an idea of where they were located and how to get around the cities.
In addition to our tour guides, these were the books we read before our trip that really added to our experience. Click on the photos for links.
We were so excited when our tour guides and rail tickets arrived in the mail! Our trip was really happening!
We created a spot in the house where we could collect all the little things we were worried we would forget and we added to it over the weeks leading up to our trip. We also practiced packing the week before the trip to make sure everything would fit.
We practiced packing a week before the trip, more from excitement then necessity. We were determined to get everything in one bag! Some important things: Don't forget outlet adaptors, money belts and extra camera batteries!
We had a lot of practicalities to set up that weren't quite as much fun as the planning. We had never taken such a long trip before! Here are some tips for a worry-free trip:
1) Remember to tell your banks and credit card companies where you are traveling a few weeks in advance so they don't freeze your card. You may also be able to increase your maximum ATM withdrawal amount for the duration of your trip.
2) Don't forget to put a hold on your mail!
3) Turn your water off so you don't have to worry about flooding.
4) Provide some family members with a list of your locations and hotels for each day so they know how to contact you in an emergency.
5) Make a list of things that need to be done at home if you have someone housesitting. Include important numbers like emergency contacts and your veteranarian if you have animals. We learned the hard way that we should have included contact information for the maintenance people we use - our air conditioning broke while we were away and our poor housesitter suffered in silence!
6) Try to pack everything in one carry-on bag so you don't have to worry about losing your luggage. We used packing cubes to help organize everything, and that really helped.
Before we knew it, we were headed to the airport to start our 10th Anniversary extravaganza!
One downside to European travel is that we have to leave part of the family behind! 18 days is a long time for any one person to watch them, so we found two different people willing to housesit the furbabies to split up the duties. How could we leave these faces behind? Luckily, they had a great time playing with their new friends and barely missed us!
Getting ready to go
Click the button to the right if you would like to hear about our 4 pre-tour days in France.
Or you can use this button to skip to our first tour day in Trier, Germany