We made it!

After several delays we finally landed in London at about 2 PM on Saturday. The boys were really good on the flight and never even made a sound. We watch some movies, read our Kindle, played some electronics and even got a little sleep. Logan didn't look so good when we got off the plane. While we were in the really long line for customs, we put those barf bags I brought off the plane to good use! ( the attached photo is a reenactment of the traumatic event!) But he was a trooper and just kept going! We took a taxi to our apartment and now we are all settled in. We have also been celebrating Davis's birthday along way.

Still sitting

12:21AM and we are still sitting at the gate in Atlanta. There has been one delay after another!

Mechanical issues

New plane. New gate. New departure time... 11:30PM!

Airport

We got to the airport at 6:30 PM for a 10:45 PM flight. We are now waiting patiently at the gate & charging up all our gizmos. We had a nice dinner at The airport and now are ready to sleep all night on the plane. We have five carry-on bags, four backpacks, three kids, and two parents for one month in Europe. We probably could have managed with four carry on bags but I wanted to have room to spare. I had an elaborate system for our 1 quart bags of liquid. However, one container came open and now we all smell like old spice! We have labels on the bags and labels on the kids hopefully we won't lose either.

Friday

Today we went to the Georgia aquarium, Centennial Park and saw the movie Brave. I'm crazy about getting to the airport early so we are here insanely early. It was about 97° here in Atlanta today. The forecast for London is to be 67°.

Aquarium

Got to the aquarium just in time for the dolphin show!

Our International Adventure Begins

At IHOP! (and I may have figured out how to do mobile posts!)

Spoiled Milk

There has been A LOT to do in preparation for our travels.  Yesterday, Davis helped with a project that covered two areas:

• eat/give away all the food in the refrigerator that would spoil
• clean the house

He cleaned out the refrigerator!  (Logan did the garage refrigerator and Ethan vacuumed the car!)

We were so proud of his work that we even showed Scott when he got home.  

And then this morning, I woke up to the sound of, "Oh No!  Don't drink that!"  In typical almost 6  year old style, it Davis a really long time to wipe down the shelves and so I turned the refrigerator off.  When I did it I said to the boys, "Remind me to turn this back on!"  Well, we all got busy and we all forgot.  It turns out that I actually turned off the refrigerator and the freezer.  The good news is that 

1. I was wanting to clean the refrigerator and freezer now we can get it really clean (as it will be practically empty in a few minutes) and 
2. all that was in the refrigerator was what we would eat today (and lots of condiments) and 
3. that it is trash day today!

Itinerary

Below you will see our rough itinerary for our trip.  We will not bore you with the detailed daily itineraries at this time.  So many of you have asked exactly what we will be doing, I felt like I should at least post this general schedule.  I am hesitant to let the entire World Wide Web know exactly where we will be and what we will be doing.  However, in this day and age if anyone really wanted to know where we were and what we were doing, they could find out.  If you are thinking of breaking into our house while we are gone... don't waste your time:

• we don't have anything worth taking (really you would be very disappointed!)
• we have many house sitters
• the police are watching very closely

Many Miles To Go

Scott made an observation today.  He plotted our travel route and discovered that we will cover approximately 1,788 miles:

It is kind of hard for us Americans to wrap our minds around traveling across so many different countries.  It is essentially the equivalent of traveling from Dothan, Alabama to Yellowstone:

If Davis Could Go Anywhere...

He would...

Hye = Hawaii !

But he is going to Europe instead.

Thoughts From Davis (almost 6 years old)

An interview with Davis about our upcoming trip:

Davis will turn 6 while we are on our trip.  We celebrated a little early on Friday.

Mom:  What are you most looking forward to about our trip?
Davis:  When we get to taste all those things!  [Editorial comment by mom - he is talking about a tour in  Paris that Scott has arranged.  We will go with a guide to several Parisian shops and taste bread, cheese, chocolate, etc!]

After going to a friend's party at Chuck E. Cheese several months ago,
he has had his heart set on having a party there too!

Mom:  Is there anything you are worried about?
Davis:  The plane crashing!

We (mostly the boys) made Angry Bird and Naughty Pig cupcakes for the party.  

Mom:  What are you going to eat?
Davis:  I don't know?

He was most excited about going in the Ticket Blaster and catching a 1000 Ticket Coupon!

Mom:  What is the best trip we have been on so far?
Davis:  The one going to Alaska, because that cruise was so good!

Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska in June 2011

Mom:  What do you think you will learn from our trip?
Davis:  I don't know.

After the party, we came home for swimming and grilling with my parents, sister & family and grandparents.

Mom:  What are you most interested in seeing?
Davis:  The Eipel (that is how he says it) Tower.

So even though he still has about 2 weeks to go, we are now considering him 6 years old!
It was a fun day for Davis and also a great way to celebrate our 16th Anniversary!

Planning

So one of the first questions people always ask when we tell them we are going to Europe for a month with three boys is... "How do you plan a trip like that?"  Well, the honest answer is we have absolutely no idea.  We are just sort of making it up as we go along.  The main thing is that we are doing LOTS of reading and studying.  We spend hours every day working on our plan.  Slowly it is all coming together into what we hope will be a very enjoyable and educational trip for all of us.

(When I read other blogs, my favorite part is the photos.  There really are no applicable photos to include in this entry (they would only be photos of Scott and me at our computers!) so I will just include some random photos for fun!)

Last Day of School

We started by having a travel agent help us figure out where to go and how long to stay there.  When we started, all we knew we wanted to do was "go to Europe" and that we had about 4 available weeks.  That was very overwhelming.  She suggested a plan sort of like this:

• London - 7 days
• Amsterdam - 3 days
• Paris - 6 days
• Munich - 4 days
• Venice - 5 days
• Paris - 6 days

After doing some research on our own, we decided to remove Munich and include a driving tour with stops in Germany, Italy, Austria and Liechtenstein.  

The travel agency had some difficulty finding accommodations for the 5 of us with the hotels that they do business with.  When we travel, we prefer to stay in homes that are vacation rentals by owner (vrbo.com).  However, the travel agency could not plan that sort of accommodations.  So we quickly discovered that we would prefer to do our own planning.  And since we are both control freaks, it probably has worked out better for everyone that we have done all our own planning.

Ethan's baseball team won the city playoffs!

So for pretty much every single day since February, Scott and I have worked on the details of our trip.   He found places to stay for each location and let the rest of us pick our favorites.  We are mostly staying in apartments but also a few hotels.  He also arranged the train tickets between destinations (which was a HUGE job).  We divided up the cities and have been working on the daily itineraries for each one.  Scott is doing Paris, Amsterdam and the driving tour.  I am planning London, Venice and Rome.  I have been working on packing (we are taking only one carry on bag each).

We checked out way too many websites to list here.  I also went to the library and bookstores to see what sort of travel books were available.  We were really hoping to find something titled "How to Plan a Month Long Trip to Europe with Boys ages 11, 8 and 6."  Unfortunately, we still have not found that resource!  We independently discovered that we liked Rick Steves' travel philosophy and advice.  We purchased all of his books and CDs and have been studying them diligently.  We have also gotten a lot of fiction and non-fiction books and movies for us to read and watch.  We have included the boys in the whole process and we talk about it constantly.

Scott's birthday

So, in a nutshell, that is how we have planned our trip.  The bad thing is that we will not know if we did a good job planning until it is too late!  Although we have done a lot of traveling, we have certainly never planned anything so extensive or to a place where we do not speak the language!  I guess pretty soon we will know how well we did in our planning.

Trip to South Dakota in June 2010

Thoughts from Ethan (11 years old)

we are going to all of these places

The Tower of London

The London Eye

Amsterdam

The Eiffel Tower 

The Louvre

The Zugspitze

The Dolomites

The Rialto bridge

The David

and The Colosseum.

Ethan