I’m finally able to freeze my high-level Europe itinerary for August (God knows how many versions I’ve made). I think the difficulty in trying to nail down which places I want to go to and which ones to cross off my list comes from the fact that I’m kinda good in geography. When I was growing up, I devoured world book encyclopedias for a hobby so the list of places that I wanted to visit when I grow up has remained vivid in my mind over the years. And I want to see everything…which is impossible unless I use a portkey, leyway, or do astral projection.
So anyway, deciding when to go was easy. There are 3 public holidays in the Philippines over a two-week period at the end of August so this bit was a no-brainer. Deciding what airline to take, not so easy. I almost succumbed to booking KLM since for the longest time it was showing good value for money (read: cheap and a direct flight) but after Holy Week this year, Singapore Airlines suddenly had a ‘roll-back’ so I was able to get a good deal. And it being SQ, it’s probably the best deal even. I tried looking at Cathay Pacific (my second choice, too complicated, cheapest option has a layover in Heathrow), Emirates (just freaking expensive) and Thai Airways (through-the-roof freaking expensive). So come August, I’ll be on a 14-hour flight to Amsterdam on board the best airline in the world. Not bad.
So now which countries to visit? My port of entry into the EU is The Netherlands since I’m meeting up with my expat (read: Euro-loaded) best friend, Jake, who’s based in Amsterdam. I don’t want to do the 8 countries/14 days type of tour since I don’t want to jog all over Europe and end up feeling more tired than before I left for my vacation. “4 countries max”, that was my rule. Being a geography junkie, I made an itinerary that made sense geographically. My first version: Netherlands (3), Germany (5), Austria (3), Czech Republic (3). This version carried on for about two months until Jake went to Rome during the Easter Holidays. “Paul you’ve got to come to Rome!”. This little statement wrecked havoc to my precious, 2-month old, geographically sound itinerary (I actually have a spreadsheet complete with train schedules, train lines, and travel times).
Now I did not want to visit Italy for just 3 days since that will be so bitin, so I had to let go of some cities – 6 days’ worth of them. Berlin was the first to go away completely (2 days), then Vienna (1 day), and lastly Amsterdam (1 day). So that gives me 4 days in Italy. Still not enough. I needed at least 6 days in Italy (Rome 3, Florence 2, Venice 1). Sadly, I had to cut off Austria completely (sniff). Now who said optimization (in whatever sense of the word) was easy? When I tried to fit the train/airplane schedules into the second version of the itinerary, I ended up losing entire days to travelling or sleeping on trains (which I had second thoughts of doing since I have trouble sleeping on board anything that moves) so in the end, I decided that the itinerary was just too stressful. After countless permutations, I decided to scrap off Italy and told myself that only a trip exclusively to Italy will do it justice (yeah yeah).
Thus, I decided to put back Austria and the 1 day in Amsterdam back on my schedule. Now Berlin, I told myself, I was not dying to see, really, so now what to do with an extra 2 days? The Answer: pass by Budapest! I didn’t know where this crazy idea came from but I think somehow at the back of my mind I knew that Hungary is just around the corner so I decided we should pay the city a visit. With 3 plane rides plus countless train rides, I was actually able to come up with an itinerary that didn’t threaten to break our backs. However, an unsettling feeling began gnawing at me a few days later. I don’t know if it was just my being Catholic or that Eat, Pray, Love has been running on HBO this month but I just couldn’t bring myself to skip Italy. Aaaaargh. The headache! So anyway, to cut to the chase, I decided to scrap Germany entirely and do just 2 days of Prague so I can have 6 days in Italy. There!
I hope I won’t be sorry for giving up Germany that easily but seeing that I have three days in Austria with one (or two) of them saved for Salzburg, I might just do a quick trip to Munich just for the heck of it. Two weeks is certainly not enough for a “see-all” trip to any of countries that I’ve mentioned but then again, a fortnight is all that I (and my boss hahah) can afford. A couple of years ago, I spent two months in the UK for work but never ventured out into continental Europe. Britain is great and all that but not going anywhere else is something that I’ve been regretting up to now.
Oh well, let’s wait and see what happens in August. :-)
So anyway, deciding when to go was easy. There are 3 public holidays in the Philippines over a two-week period at the end of August so this bit was a no-brainer. Deciding what airline to take, not so easy. I almost succumbed to booking KLM since for the longest time it was showing good value for money (read: cheap and a direct flight) but after Holy Week this year, Singapore Airlines suddenly had a ‘roll-back’ so I was able to get a good deal. And it being SQ, it’s probably the best deal even. I tried looking at Cathay Pacific (my second choice, too complicated, cheapest option has a layover in Heathrow), Emirates (just freaking expensive) and Thai Airways (through-the-roof freaking expensive). So come August, I’ll be on a 14-hour flight to Amsterdam on board the best airline in the world. Not bad.
So now which countries to visit? My port of entry into the EU is The Netherlands since I’m meeting up with my expat (read: Euro-loaded) best friend, Jake, who’s based in Amsterdam. I don’t want to do the 8 countries/14 days type of tour since I don’t want to jog all over Europe and end up feeling more tired than before I left for my vacation. “4 countries max”, that was my rule. Being a geography junkie, I made an itinerary that made sense geographically. My first version: Netherlands (3), Germany (5), Austria (3), Czech Republic (3). This version carried on for about two months until Jake went to Rome during the Easter Holidays. “Paul you’ve got to come to Rome!”. This little statement wrecked havoc to my precious, 2-month old, geographically sound itinerary (I actually have a spreadsheet complete with train schedules, train lines, and travel times).
Now I did not want to visit Italy for just 3 days since that will be so bitin, so I had to let go of some cities – 6 days’ worth of them. Berlin was the first to go away completely (2 days), then Vienna (1 day), and lastly Amsterdam (1 day). So that gives me 4 days in Italy. Still not enough. I needed at least 6 days in Italy (Rome 3, Florence 2, Venice 1). Sadly, I had to cut off Austria completely (sniff). Now who said optimization (in whatever sense of the word) was easy? When I tried to fit the train/airplane schedules into the second version of the itinerary, I ended up losing entire days to travelling or sleeping on trains (which I had second thoughts of doing since I have trouble sleeping on board anything that moves) so in the end, I decided that the itinerary was just too stressful. After countless permutations, I decided to scrap off Italy and told myself that only a trip exclusively to Italy will do it justice (yeah yeah).
Thus, I decided to put back Austria and the 1 day in Amsterdam back on my schedule. Now Berlin, I told myself, I was not dying to see, really, so now what to do with an extra 2 days? The Answer: pass by Budapest! I didn’t know where this crazy idea came from but I think somehow at the back of my mind I knew that Hungary is just around the corner so I decided we should pay the city a visit. With 3 plane rides plus countless train rides, I was actually able to come up with an itinerary that didn’t threaten to break our backs. However, an unsettling feeling began gnawing at me a few days later. I don’t know if it was just my being Catholic or that Eat, Pray, Love has been running on HBO this month but I just couldn’t bring myself to skip Italy. Aaaaargh. The headache! So anyway, to cut to the chase, I decided to scrap Germany entirely and do just 2 days of Prague so I can have 6 days in Italy. There!
I hope I won’t be sorry for giving up Germany that easily but seeing that I have three days in Austria with one (or two) of them saved for Salzburg, I might just do a quick trip to Munich just for the heck of it. Two weeks is certainly not enough for a “see-all” trip to any of countries that I’ve mentioned but then again, a fortnight is all that I (and my boss hahah) can afford. A couple of years ago, I spent two months in the UK for work but never ventured out into continental Europe. Britain is great and all that but not going anywhere else is something that I’ve been regretting up to now.
Oh well, let’s wait and see what happens in August. :-)
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