Yo-de-lay-E-ooo!
I’ve heard people joke that lots of babies are born 9 months after a terrible snow storm; if this is true, there are bound to be many babies born in October and November–nine months past this miserable winter. But in my case, I’ve been keeping myself busy in a much more G-rated fashion–trip planning, of course.
We’ve actually decided upon one thing–our side trip from London. Doug got to pick, as I have been encouraging him to become more active in the planning process (and, ok, I’ll admit it, because he’s been kind of annoyed that I’ve made all of the decisions–but seriously, if he wants to do hours upon hours of research, he’s more than welcome). We will be going on one of those canned tour bus trips that take you to multiple impossibly far away destinations at one shot. He wants to see both Oxford and Stonehenge, and that’s the only way to do both. Most tours that include both also throw in Windsor Castle for good measure, which I’m excited about (though I’d really rather go to Leeds…but more on that in later posts.)
I have also determined that flying on Iceland Express, though risky, really is the cheapest option. My flight, with a departure date 12 days later than Doug’s–would only be $637 round trip from Newark to London. That’s at least $300 less than any other flight from any other city to any other city that I’ve researched (and I’ve researched a LOT of cities! Snowy weather, remember?) I’ve not booked it yet, but the desire to do so has led me to contemplate my solo leg of the trip even more.
Which brings me to the final update–I’m thinking of nixing the Great Tour of Britain all together. Or, at the very least, shortening it considerably. You see, I realize that I may have been seduced by the idea of traveling. And traveling is expensive. Going from place to place…to place…to place…it adds up. It would be much cheaper to go to ONE place. Somewhere that I could tour around on local transportation or, better, on foot, and stay there for a while. After a bit of contemplation, I realized where I’d go if I could only go to one place. It is a rather unexpected, almost random-sounding location, but I have good reason. I’d really, really like to go to Switzerland.
You see, I have an obsession with large mountains. The big, pointy kind with snow on top. And I honestly almost start to cry when looking at any sort of picture or video of the Alps. Large, grassy meadows, steep hillsides, cows complete with bells, and those jagged, icy peaks. It makes me want to yodel. Ok, not really. But I’d watch other people yodel. And that’s pretty hardcore in and of itself.
I’ve looked into transport from Paris to Switzerland and then Switzerland to London; if I fly into Geneva and out of Zurich, the small inter-European flights will cost less than the price of a Eurostar train from Paris to London. It seems like a good idea. I’ve also settled on the town of Murren as a base, but this is still up in the air (get it?), as lodging is hard to come by. But I figure with all of the money I’d save on transportation, I could spend a few extra dollars a night. This will, of course, require much more research.
On the other hand, I finally finalized my Great Tour of Britain plans, complete with actual budget and specific lodging. I’ll be holding on to all of that for when I realize that Switzerland is cost prohibitive. Which I’m sure I’ll do sometime very soon–extremely soon, that is, if this snow keeps up!