A long eurotrip has always been on my travel bucket list, when I heard that Dom and Jen were planning a trip later in the year, I had to find a way to go. The universe always has a way to deliver what you want.
Itinerary - the preliminary itinerary was not realistic, it had a laundry list of countries, sights in a short time frame. After realistically, starting to put dates and realities on the trip, some things got cut, leaving a much smaller itinerary. Now that the itinerary is set, we have to focus on transportation
Itinerary - the preliminary itinerary was not realistic, it had a laundry list of countries, sights in a short time frame. After realistically, starting to put dates and realities on the trip, some things got cut, leaving a much smaller itinerary. Now that the itinerary is set, we have to focus on transportation
Transportation around Europe - one of the big decisions is how to get around Europe for a month and change for a few people. Train seems the most adventurous / obvious choice. But at first glance, its complicated, to get a good price, you have to book ahead, there are multiple companies and other headaches. When it was evident that no one was going to do the work in figuring this out, renting a car became the obvious choice. I called around some rental companies and Hertz had the best deal 1300$ pickup in Paris and drop in Amsterdam. About a week or so from the start of the trip, I started reading about limitations in driving in Austria and Germany in November and that Hertz wont let their cars go to Checz republic. There is now a law that you have to have special tires (M+S, mud plus snow) in those two countries. While you may not get a ticket, insurance will not pay if you get into an accident. Since Hertz could not promise us the right tires leaving from Paris, we had to call an audible and go with Renault Lease Buy back program. The deal with those is you buy a car (included w/ insurance, roadside assistance and multiple drivers) and they buy it back from you at the end of the trip. This option is a good deal for 21+ days and multiple people. These guys gave us our choice of car, where we were able to choose the Dacia Duster (a cross over) w/ GPS and the right tires. http://www.renaultusa.com/SelectRe.asp
Lodging - for lodging we decided to go airbnb for most spots, so, booking lodging a town or two in advance was fine, since we booked a spot for UK, Paris and Loire Valley, we were set in this department.
What to bring - the initial list is below, I brought some extra electronics so that I can do some work and a gopro setup for pictures.
Shoes
- Running shoes
- Toms
- Boots
Electronics
- Gopro, extra memory, cable, tripod, extender, head piece
- Aux cable for car
- Cell car charger
- Asus T100 Tablet, mouse, charger, case
- Cell phone cord
- GPS for car
- Converter for chargers to European plug
Clothes
- 3x underwear
- 2x comfy Ts
- 3x light sweaters
- 2x dress shirt
- 2x jeans (jean color and gray)
- Woven hat
- Gloves
- WOrkout shorts/tshirt/socks
- Ski neck cover
- Columbia jacket - not too thick
- Belt
- Socks
Toiletry bag
Backpack and Rain stuff
- Gregory 95 Whitney
- Rain fly
- Day pack (to carry valuables w/ me)
- Umbrella
- (not bringing a rain jacket, dont think it will rain much and bringing umbrella just in case)
- 7 guides, mostly Rick Steves (loire, rome, south france, bavaria, berlin, prague, amsterdam area)
- Ordered Michelin maps for France and Bavaria
- Copy of documents, contract for car
- Journal
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