I haven’t blogged in forEVer. Wow. That’s what twitter has done. It has replaced my long boring updates with short boring updates.
So Courtney and I went to Europe. True story. It was October 8-20, to wit, two months ago and then some.
Wei’s right, if I don’t make notes of it at this point, I’ll end up regretting it later. Who knows how much I’ve forgotten by now. I don’t know if this will be interesting for anyone else to read, but here it is anyhow. And this is just my version, I may or may not be projecting my opinions as our opinions. Same goes for facts.
Hmm, I think I’ll do this in parts.
-2. IN WHICH We Decide to Go.
-1. IN WHICH We Plan and Prepare.
0. IN WHICH We Hop the Sea.
1. IN WHICH We Go to Munich and the Shortcomings of my Footwear are Revealed but at Least the Company and Food are Good.
2. IN WHICH We Took The Midnight Train to Budapest and Enjoyed Three Days of Cold and Gloom.
3. IN WHICH We Voyage to Italy, and Spend Most of Our Time Voyaging or Waiting to Voyage, and IN WHICH Tony Feels Like an Idiot.
4. The return.
5. What’s next?
We both love to travel.
As far as Europe goes, Courtney had been to France once before, in 2007. And we all know about my trip to Hungary, which occurred about the same time, because I have not shut up about it for the last two years.
We’d been talking about going on a trip for some time, and I keep an eye on various travel websites. Once in a while, a bananas fare would appear. For instance, it must have been in March or so that I noted a $299 round trip fare to Moscow. Why would we go to Moscow? Well, at that price, you can’t afford not to. I mean, that’s cheaper than going to Toronto. But I didn’t jump on it. I wasn’t seriously considering it, either, but I thought that next time I should just do it. What’s the worst that can happen, I get my fare refunded or a credit?
So then all of a sudden, one morning in June (I think the 5th or 6th) these travel sites were going berserk because of some great Delta fares from the east coast (ATL and JFK) to a bunch of destinations in Europe, for much of the fall season. Upper $200s to get to Europe is pretty crazy. As I recall, these were fares to Rome, Venice, Naples, Athens, Paris, Madrid, and more. And Zurich. Now, fares from RDU were a little higher, as we’re just a sleepy backwater patrolled by Andy Taylor and Barney Fife [Fig. 1]. But still, low to mid $300s to all these cities!
I rang up Courtney on the GChat and we discussed the idea. Meanwhile, there was a buying frenzy going on, and I saw fares raising in front of my very eyes. We decided to go ahead with it. Exciting! I waded out into the web to procure tickets. To where? Wherever looks good. Once we’re there, the reasoning went, it’ll be cheapish to get around, so we might as well just get ourselves over there.
And then it sold out.
All the good fares were gone, back up in the $600s for October flights.
But I kept looking, and wouldn’t you know it, even though Orbitz and Kayak and Delta.com failed me, Priceline came through! Praise be to Shatner. I had a few options, and since she wanted to visit France again, and we both wanted to visit Germany, and possibly Italy, and you know, maybe — if we could fit it in — Budapest, Zurich seemed as good a place as any. Pretty central. So I picked that city, and a somewhat arbitrary trip length, and bam! Two round trip tickets, RDU-ATL-ZRH and back, for $322 apiece.
This is awesome.
We didn’t know where we wanted to go. Yeah, the airfare drove the trip.
We discussed many options for places to visit. Among them:
| Area | Pro | Con |
| Lyon, France | C wanted to go there, Tony kind of somewhat also wants to visit France. Plus C knows French. | Wrong direction from the other places. |
| Munich, Germany | We both have German heritage, and I know some German (enough to look like an idiot). Also, we have friends there who we can not only visit but have offered a place to stay. | Threat of putsch. |
| Budapest, Hungary | I like it. And it’s cheap. And I think I have taught myself enough Hungarian to get around in a “look at the tourist trying to speak our crazy language, let’s help him out instead of rob him of his forints” way. | Who in the hell cares about Budapest besides Tony? |
| Venice, Italy | Gondolas! And the threat that it will become Atlantis soon kind of adds urgency. | A bit out of the way, and expensive. |
| Como, Italy | The lakes are supposed to be beautiful, and it’s a resort town, so the fact that we don’t speak Italian shouldn’t be a huge problem, as I am sure they speak English. (SPOILER ALERT: They do not.) | Expensive. Neither of us know Italian, but C can say a few phrases. |
| Zurich, Switzerland | We’re gonna fly in and out of it, so we’re gonna be there. They make nice watches and clocks and secret accounts. | Very expensive. And is known as the Detroit of Europe. |
What we decided on:
View Eurotrip Fall 09 in a larger map
