Making plans...

So the planning has finally begun in earnest for my October trip to Europe with my travel companion Don (aka: Big Poppa Shields). 

Originally it was going to be fly in to London for a few days, then go to Ireland, then back to London, then train to Paris....then leave.  But, after thinking it over...that seems mighty stupid!  More jumping around from country to country with London as base was killing our chances of doing stuff.

So a plan was hatched. Fly into Dublin, stay for three days and leave for London on the fourth day. Stay in London for three days, leave for Paris on the fourth. Three days in Paris and then home to the States on the fourth.  Seems like a solid plan....until I realized that some of the things I wanted to do would be left out in the cold with that plan...namely Scotland!

One can never underestimate flexible travel plans! This is why I didn't want to get roped into a group tour. I can't even commit to a dinner choice long enough to order sometimes.

Now, I think we have a time table hammered down that we can live with...or at least not deviate too far from! 

Day One: Get into Dublin around 7am...rent car and drive south! On way to Cork stop in Co. Carlow and visit Duckett's Grove Castle. Carry on to Cork to take in the sights and stay the night.

Day Two: Get up and drive back to Dublin. Grab hotel, hang out in Dublin and head north to Belfast for the afternoon/evening. Get back to Dublin late and crash.

Day Three: Fly from Dublin to Glasgow on early flight.  Rent car make trip to Loch Ness. This was a must for me and one of the reasons that the travel plans were changed. I, for some reason, thought it was a much shorter trip from London to Loch Ness...not so much the case!  Spend time in Loch Ness and then meander back to Glasgow in the the early evening....enjoy.

Day Four: Fly to London.  Originally this was going to be a train trip through the English countryside. But, a rail pass (as far as I could see) was actually going to be about the same price, if not more expensive, than a quick flight. The flight would also cut out about 5 hours of travel...unless Google maps lied to me! Arrive in London and do typical touristy type things for rest of day.

Day Five: Stuff in London....trip to Stonehenge ("The Greatest Henge in the World"....I'm going to be seriously sad if I can't get that on a t-shirt!)

Day Six: Stuff in London

Day Seven: Stuff in London...and a trip to Cardiff. As a fan of British Sci Fi I can't pass up a trip to this great Welsh city. Home of the Millennium Centre, shopping, Cardiff bay...and of course the fictional former home of team Torchwood. (yeah that's right, I am planning vacation locations based on Russell T. Davis' Dr. Who spin off!)

Day Eight: Bullet train to Paris...hotel...food....museums

Day Nine: Paris...food .... Museums

Day Ten: Paris ...maybe out of the city travel...

Day Eleven: Wake up and get my ass to the airport to fly home and hate the fact that I am only a few days away from going back to work!

Now I need to find the small things to fill in those wide open days in London and Paris. Also, need to make sure that my netbook has plenty of space for movies (for the trip) and photos (of the trip).  Probably would be a wise decision to renew my Flickr pro account too.

Things that will fill the gaps in time I am sure will include: eating, drinking, tours of places you can drink, tours of famous places, tours of infamous places. Shopping---oh God the shopping is going to kill me! Lounging in awesome locals...sadly it will be October so probably going to be indoor lounging.

Blogging, Facebooking, Twittering and generally lamenting the fact that I will eventually have to leave should also factor heavily into the rotation of things to do. Sadly the one thing that will not be on the schedule is the planned NFL football game between my beloved Chicago Bears and the Tampa Bay Bucs. Not necessarly because the game may not happen (boo)! The real reasons tends to lean more towards the fact that it would be cost prohibitive to stay the extra two days.  Between tickets to the game, getting back to London from Paris, two more nights in a hotel and switching flights AGAIN, it would add about another $1200 to a trip that I already am on the boarder of not being able to afford!

But, stuff is purchased, plans are made...money can be made with extra work! It's all a go! Pretty sure that Europe (and myself) will never be the same after this trip.

European Bucket List.

With my impending travel to Europe (you know...where History comes from) I have decided to think about the few things that will be readily available to be added to my to do list. I was thinking of amending my actual bucket list. But, now that travel plans have been made and the actual trips is in sight I feel like that may be cheating. So some of these will be lifted from my original bucket list of a while back, while others will be new and improved. Right now the plan is to visit England, Ireland, France and maybe a few other countries.I think I'll break them up into a few sections. -- submissions are welcomed, encouraged even!

Section I: food and beverage.
1. Drink a pint of Guiness in an actual Irish pub.
2. Slam down some Absinthe in France
3. Fish and Chips in England...possibly from a lunch van..
4. Eat TRADITIONAL Haggis (not from a can)
5. Try at least one traditional dish in each country that I can't get in the states.
6. When possible eat local. Skip eating anywhere that I can find at home (unless desperate and/or broke)

Section II: Locations and events
1. Hit as many nerdy Dr. Who spots as possible...including a trip to Cardiff
2. Some sort of Ripper tour
3. The Louvre
4. Buckingham palace
5. Stonehenge (the greatest henge of them all)
6. South Shields
7. Eiffel Tower
8. Try to find some sort of local concert to go to...up and coming bands or established acts, comedy...whatever!
9. Visit a Castle....check the tapestry! (get it? get it?)

Section III: Unk
-- this is the section that I will leave open for suggestions and late arrivals to my brain!

Plans Change

"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men..." --Robert Burns

Needless to say one of the grand things about making plans 5-6 months in advance is that they are most likely going to change! Sucks when they do change, but it can't really be avoided.  

The plans for my summer trip to Amsterdam have already changed!

The original plan was to meet my buddy Ryan and his wife in Amsterdam for about a week of crazy fun and tourist-y type actions.  Now, I have had to push the trip by a few months. The big reason being cost!

When you are trying to coordinate a trip and make accommodations and budgets it's helpful to know when you are going to be able to go! Sadly, Ryan and Elizabeth are kind of at the mercy of her college program and don't know exactly when their trip is going to be. Which means I can't find out until they do! Sadly, that leaves me with a wide hole in my summer schedule and an even bigger question mark on my bank account.

Case in point-- If I go in June or mid to late July then I will be shelling out close to $1700 in airfare alone.  While not a horrible price (or a great price). It's about what I was thinking the price would be for airfare. That means I am going to have to come up with a ton more extra cash for hotel, transportation, food, etc..

Now if I delay until October I can branch out a little more. By going in mid to late October I can pay around $2300 and that will include round trip airfare, 11 nights stay in hotels and a car rental. Plus, that will allow me to widen my travel area to probably include the UK, Ireland, France and the Netherlands.

So, I won't be able to hang with Ryan and his lovely wife...but that doesn't mean I will be traveling alone. In addition to a wider travel area I have picked up a new travel companion. My father!

Most people would say, "Travel with you dad instead of your best bud! How's that a fair trade?"  To which i will say, "My dad is a Rock Star!"

Well, maybe not a rock star...but he is a ton of fun. I know I can ignore him for long periods of time without hurting his feelings too much. Plus, if I get in trouble in a foreign country it always pays to have a parent and their bank account around to bail you out before you have to spend too much time in a French or Irish prison!

So we'll see how "Summer Plans 2011...rd. 2" turns out as we get further along in the year! Once we nail down dates I can start looking a making specific plans...that's where the true fun begins. I can start planning around local events, maybe map out a cool concert or two. That's when I'll start getting excited. Until then I'm just mildly enamored with my plans. Later on is when I get excited/giddy!!

My (planned) Summer Vacation

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the large sums of money this will cost me.



My buddy Ryan called me up about a month ago to find out what my plans were for this summer. Seems he was going to be heading to Europe with his wife and would have a ton of free time on his hands while she did her scholarly things during the day.

His plan was that I schedule a summer trip to Amsterdam and meet up with them to finally enjoy the little European vacation we were supposed to have before our final year of college!

That trip was scheduled since he was studying abroad at in Sunderland, England. I was excited to go and started making plans only to be Euro-blocked by Illinois State University.  Seems that one class I would need for my major coursework was only going to be offered as a summer class...so Europe would have to wait.

If it ended there I probably wouldn't be dwelling on it almost 10 years later. But, the fun really can two weeks before I was supposed to have left for England. I got a call from the university telling me that there wasn't enough interest in the summer class so the four students who it really affected were going to be given the option of taking the class next semester along with the upper level class it was a pre-requisite for. Needless to say one can not properly get their shit together for a European trip in two weeks. Especially when you don't have a passport at the time!

With that I missed out on Stonehenge (the greatest henge in the world), all things Beatles, and a host of other bits of awesome. So, having been presented with the option to recapture a missed opportunity of my youth I said yes.

Actually I think my exact words were closer to F--K yes! But, why squabble with the details! So here I sit almost a month into the new year and it's time to work on a plan.

I think it's gonna go a little something like this:

1) Get passport -- Important first step in any travel plans that involve leaving the US

2) Find out exact dates that Ryan and his loverly wife will be in Amsterdam.

3) Figure out flight plans....

     3a) save almost all of my tax return money to help pay for decent flight package to and from

4) Start working on ideas for what to do when in Amsterdam.

     --While I think there is enough to do in Amsterdam I would also like to branch out a little using the city as my base of operations for the (hopefully) two week trip.

5) get my mind right to start working mad overtime to save up cash for this trip. I should also throw in a prayer for the US dollar gain some strength overseas!

So I am sure that this plan will grow and evolve as the year goes on. Would love to take a train ride into Paris for a day. But, at just over four hours and a few hundred bucks may have to settle for something a little closer. Amsterdam to Brussels and then Brussels to London seems to be about the same.

Plans come and plans go...but my homies stay eternal...wait...where did that come from? What I was trying to say is that while I hope and pray that this vacation comes to life in it's current form. I do plan on traveling somewhere this summer. So, if things fall through to Amsterdam for some reason maybe I'll just have to adjust my destination to London or someplace else, maybe later in the year when it's a little cheaper!!

All I know is that I am currently geared up the summer adventure I missed out on almost 10 years ago. In some way it will happen.