22 August 2014

Our Europe and UK Trip - The Plan

My boyf - Chris and I have been planning our Europe and UK holiday for the last 8 months or so now (we actually started planning before we flew for our last trip within Asia back in December 2013). We have always wanted to travel to Europe and the UK so we decided that we should just make it happen.

The planning has been far from simple but being a perfectionist has its perks - I've literally thought about everything possible - from flights to hotels to transport to food to pickpockets and sites to visit. You name it, I've researched it.

I normally like to be spontaneous but for such a huge trip with limited time in each destination. I believe it's best planned so we won't be kicking ourselves because we missed something important or couldn't fit all the things we want to do into one day.

So here's how we planned our trip with some questions we asked ourselves during the planning process:

1. When do we want to go?
Since we already had a trip to Asia booked for December 2013 to February 2014, we had to ensure we left some time before our next departure to accumulate some more annual leave and $$. We also wanted to miss the tourist rush (peak times) so we settle for dates around September 2014.

2. Where do we actually want to go?
Since this trip is our first trip to Europe and the UK, we both wanted to visit the famous landmarks aka Eiffel Tower, Colosseum, Buckingham Palace etc. We researched and researched and finally decided that if we want to go to so many places within a certain time frame, it would be best for us to join a tour of some sort that departs from London and goes through Europe and finishes in London again.

Following thorough research and speaking to friends and family that have been to Europe and the UK before, we found a list of tour companies and went online to research what they have to offer and the prices they could offer it for.

In the end, we decided to pay our deposit for a Europe Explorer - 18 days, 9 countries and 21 experiences with Expat Explore. This tour will take us to France, Spain, Monaco, Italy, Vatican City, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany & Belgium. What's better is we booked super early so it was cheap!

3. How long are we going for?
Since the tour we selected already covers 18 days, we thought to ourselves - how long can we afford to be gone for? Since both our bosses are super flexible, we proposed a month long holiday away and they both accepted. No questions asked!

4. What do we want to do outside of the tour?
Since we have always wanted to visit Greece (my dream is to visit Santorini), we wondered whether we could fit that before or after our Europe tour. We played around with the dates and decided that if we leave Melbourne a few days earlier then initially planned, we could spend about a week traveling Greece and Santorini! Yay :)

From there, we would fly to Paris and spend some extra days there (many people suggested spending extra time in Paris) before we join our tour in Paris (we were given the option of joining the tour in either Paris or London). Since the tour ends in London, we decided to end our holiday with 5 days exploring London. Perfect.

This time next week, we will be starting our adventure :)

1 comment:

  1. Whooohooo! Can't wait till your post-trip updates! :D Exciting!!!

    ReplyDelete

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