Poor Me
So the trip has officially been shortened slightly, giving us extra time only at the beginning of our trip; originally we had a five to six day cushion at both ends. But we’ve made some decisions based on this, and I think they are good decisions. They are as follows:
1. As we do not know what the airfare situation is, we need to have multiple plans.
1.1. Multiple plan number one–Airfare dips down incredibly, we buy a cheap ticket to Paris, and we stay at the cheap rental in Florence.
1.2. Multiple plan number two–Airfare does NOT change AT ALL, we buy an expensive ticket to Amsterdam on a large website with a hotel–in Amsterdam–included for the first part of the trip.
1.2.1. We stay in Amsterdam for four days, travel by train to Brussels, sight see for an afternoon, continue to Bruges, stay for a day and a night, and end up in Paris.
2. If we don’t get to do Florence this trip (what I want), and as we will definitely not get to Prague this time around (what the husband wants), we will plan to return for at least the next two summers, one year doing Italy/Greece, and one year doing Eastern Europe.
3. I am going to stop looking at airfare obsessively until at least the middle of March. Note the addition of ‘obsessively’; I will still be looking, but not in an obsessive fashion, and I will not expect to find any amazing fares anytime soon.
I think this is all very good. I plan to kill time between now and mid-March planning every detail of our two week stay in Paris, which, to be fair, would be a pretty amazing experience in and of itself. And, of course, I’ll be consoling myself that on my way to Paris I only get to go to EITHER Amsterdam (and Belgium) OR Florence (and Tuscany). Poor, poor me.
Tracy, we travel to Europe for free using our Citibank credit card that is connected with American Airlines miles. Just a thought. I enjoy reading your blog.
yes, we really need to get a card with air miles. when we got our credit card, we didn’t travel outside the tri-state area, and thus did not require frequent flier anything. but, since then, i’ve been bit by the travel bug, and it certainly would pay off at this point. perhaps i should do that before we purchase tickets–we can use the miles earned for our trip NEXT summer (2011).
I’d do Bruges after Amsterdam and before Brussels so you don’t have to backtrack. My personal opinion would be to spend any time you’d be in Brussels in either Bruges or spend the day in Haarlem or one of the Dutch outdoor museums before you leave or stop in Normandy on the way to Paris.
thank you–that is actually very helpful advice. since we realized our trip would be cut short, we’ve been putting more thought into what is REALLY important, and have been contemplating bruges vs brussels. we’d both prefer bruges, but that’s just from what we’ve read. it is good to hear it from someone else. thank you!