Planning a Ten-Day

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Tomorrow afternoon, we will be launching into a new kind of adventure: the "Ten-Day Free Travel."
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"Free," you should know, does not refer to the financial aspects of the experience . . . it simply suggests that we are liberated from normal time constraints, and we can travel wherever we please. It sounds pretty cool, and it is pretty cool -- but it takes a lot of planning.
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Why so complicated? Well, we are making plans for five people, and we are dealing with various currencies (and fluctuating exchange rates). We have Eurail passes, but they have lots of different products . . . some trains need reservations, and some do not; in some trains, "first class" is truly first class . . . and in other cases, it means something else! We need to find a balance between doing too much and doing too little, and we are trying to avoid long, uninterrupted stretches of traveling. We are also trying to decide which sites need to be seen while the leaves are still changing, and which sites need to be seen before the weather gets unreasonably cold. We need to visit some really interesting places (to satisfy the girls), and some really boring historical places (to satisfy Keith). And, on top of everything else, we are dealing with various languages and we are trying to save as much money as possible. It's a lot to figure out!
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Our students are required to make detailed itineraries. They must give us train schedules, housing accommodations (with contact phone numbers), and sightseeing plans. It isn't easy to do! Sponsors can afford to be less structured, but we cannot afford to fly by the seat of our pants . . . that would be very expensive, and we don't want to be stranded in the northern wastelands of Norway. So . . . Barbara has taken the lead: she has done the research, made the inquiries, and secured the reservations. Keith has made helpful suggestions. At the moment, our plans look a little like this:

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October 16: Vienna to Munich

October 17: Newschwanstein Castle

October 18: Munich to Mainz

October 19: Rhine River tour (depart for overnight train ride to Copenhagen)

October 20-21: Copenhagen (depart for overnight train to Oslo)

October 22: Oslo

October 23: "Norway in a Nutshell" fjord tour

October 24: Oslo to Copenhagen

October 25: Copenhagen to Munich

October 26: Munich to Vienna

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That seems like enough. We are planning another one in November, and we hope to visit Paris. For now, though, we are getting excited about Scandinavia, and we look forward to making a report when it's all said and done!

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