I have wanted to travel Europe for over 20 years. Actually, it’s probably closer to 30 years. As I was approaching 40, I decided that a trip to Europe was how I was going to celebrate. I rallied my two best friends, and we were set.
This is the first of our Travel Europe Series of what I hope will be many more to come. Because while I love staying in the Twin Cities with my family, I also love — absolutely LOVE — to travel. With or without our kids.
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Europe Travel Key Characters and Their Key CharacteristicsGianna — Extrovert. Anxious. Moderate Reader. Wants a little adventure, but definitely not a lot. LOVES meeting people. Andrea — Ambivert leaning just slightly toward introvert. Comforting. Extreme Reader. Needs to know the plan and memorizes maps. LOVES adventure. Dacia — Introvert. Attune to others feelings. Reader. Funniest when stressed. LOVES to travel. Becky — Introvert. Real. Extreme Reader. World traveler. LOVES her family. |
From the beginning, we had a problem. We wanted to travel Europe. As in go to Spain, Germany, Switzerland, France, England, and Ireland. At one point, I had it all planned out. We were going to plane hop to all these countries because why not?
I’ll tell you why not. We had 10 days. 6 countries.
There was no way, and my friends waited patiently until I finally came to that conclusion myself.
The Decision
Little by little we whittled our list of countries down. Spain was taken off the list quickly since we didn’t want to bother our friends before they moved. Switzerland was removed because we wrangled our Switzerland-living friend to join us. Germany was removed when we couldn’t reach our contact there, and France was hacked off because two of us weren’t that attached to it.
That left England and Ireland. Travel Europe became travel the UK. And I was more than okay with that.
Except there were two problems. The first problem was that Ireland wasn’t on Dacia’s wish list. That’s a lot of money to spend on something that received 2 out of 3 votes. The second problem was that every time Andrea would mention a place she wanted to go in Ireland, it was actually in Scotland. Every. Single. Time. I’m not even joking!
So Dacia and I chatted about it and then approached Andrea.
“Since Dacia doesn’t really need to see Ireland and since every time you mention something you think is in Ireland when it is actually in Scotland, let’s not go to Ireland. Let’s go to Scotland.”
So it was settled. We were going to visit Scotland for the first part of the trip and England for the second part.
But that’s not the end of the story.
Far from it.