The Dream
A trip to Europe started off as nothing more than a daydream. It was something I’d fantasize about now and again, but more as a fun escape from reality than a serious thought. Yet after spending hours reading about the history and culture of various cities and scrolling through countless captivating pictures, I decided I wanted to make the dream come to life. Luckily, I had my best friends to not only support the dream, but to help make it into a reality. So the four of us, my two best friends and one of their husbands, committed to go to Europe.
From there, the dream became an idea and that idea blossomed into a plan.
The Plan
In my opinion, the most crucial part of any trip is the planning. There are some people who choose to play entire trips by ear and others who create an extensive game plan. I am part of the latter group.
If I’m being honest, I’m a little crazy when it comes to my itinerary. It probably definitely looks more precise than most, if only because I like to plan down to the minute. Although my itinerary ends up looking like the schedule of a crazy soccer mom, it serves as more of a guide than anything else; if it’s followed down to the minute is determined in the moment by the group’s consensus. I think of time as a precious commodity when traveling because who knows when or if I will get another chance to travel to that specific spot. I would rather not spend time looking up things to do/see and instead have options laid out to really maximize the experience.
The first step in the planning process was to decide where to go. We all had individual lists, but we had to narrow that down to start building an itinerary. Each one of us had a specific city that was a must, a deal-breaker that we would not relent. After we established those, the rest filled in fairly easily based on the route. We decided that we wanted to spend at least two nights in each location. We were able to determine how many cities we were going to visit by the amount of days we wanted to spend in each and the total amount of time off we each could get. That led us to seven cities (Rome, Santorini, Athens, Venice, Milan, Lucerne, and Barcelona), spanning across four countries (Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and Spain).
Flights
Once our cities were picked, the next step was to book our flights. We put a date on our calendars to get together and purchase all of them at once, starting with the initial flight to Europe and the return flight back to the United States. We picked a multi-city flight costing approximately $500 that would fly into Rome and out of Barcelona. The flight to Rome had two layovers, one in Phoenix and one in London, but that helped keep the cost relatively low. For the rest of the trip, we decided on a mix of flights and train rides. We booked a flight from Rome to Santorini for approximately $160, a flight from Santorini to Athens for $115, a flight from Athens to Venice for $215, a train ride from Venice to Milan for $27, a train ride from Milan to Lucerne for $36, a train ride from Lucerne to Zurich for $41 and lastly a flight from Zurich to Barcelona for $87. One thing we didn’t know when booking, but later found out the hard way is that it’s always best to put down your full name as it is on your passport. We left out our middle names on one flight and had to pay an additional change fee before we could fly.
With our flights booked, the next important step was to book our lodging.
Lodging
When booking lodging, our main concern was finding a reasonable place that was near a metro station. We booked stays through AirBnb for every city except for Lucerne. Most of the AirBnb’s average around $40 per night with $60 per night in Barcelona being the most expensive and $25 per night in Athens our cheapest stay. We splurged a little in Lucerne, opting for hotel rooms in the downtown area since there were few AirBnb’s in the city and the access to transportation was more limited than in other cities.
Booking the lodging took us about two weeks. We first narrowed down the options to just a handful in each city and decided from there as a group. It helped that we knew that we really would only be using the places to sleep and change, allowing us to be a little less picky. Once we figured out the lodging, we finally were able to get started on the fun part, planning out all of the sight-seeing adventures.
The Rough Draft
Planning things to do was a process. We started off brainstorming, utilizing Google sheets to share all of our ideas on places to see, eat, and drink for every city and location. The sheet included details such as websites, operating hours, pricing and personal notes for every idea. We then individually ranked each item to help us narrow down the must-to’s. We had at least 20 or so options on each tab so it was a lengthy process. With the results tallied, we were able to build our itinerary. We split up the cities amongst us to evenly spread out the workload. The fruit of our labor was an amazing – and slightly over-the-top – schedule blending all of the things we wanted throughout our trip.
The Final Itinerary
Rome:
Santorini:
Athens:
Venice:
Milan:
Lucerne:
Barcelona:
As you can see, the final result clearly displays all of the hard work we put into planning. I admit, our itinerary looks a little bit intimidating, but I can definitely say that we didn’t follow it to the T. There were times we had to change things around because we accidentally missed a tour or because it was just way too hot. I think planning is an important part of any trip but being flexible to change is key to enjoying it in the moment. Ultimately, the experience is what you’re there for in the first place; never forget to appreciate where you end up.
A Spoonful of Honey 