Planning and Resources

I had a lot of fun planning this vacation.  I started with figuring out where the trains ran, to come up with a rough itinerary.   I had to negotiate a bit with my husband, and we had some compromises.  (I wanted a week in Prague, he wanted a week in Berlin, we ended up splitting the week in half.)

Flights:

For previous years I used Kayak to shop for airfare.   I heard about google flights and tried that this time.   In December I started checking airfare weekly.   Starting in January I started pricing it several times a week - making sure Tuesday was in the mix.  I still checked Kayak, but mainly used google.   The price was staying stubbornly at $2k/person for coach seats for our open jaw tickets.   For giggles I also checked business class fares.  (I have had fantasies of flying business class on a transatlantic flight for years... but could never justify the price...)   Business class tickets were ranging between $5-6k/person... Which was close to our total budget for the trip.   Then the miracle occurred...  google flights found a business class fair for $3k.  It's ticketed by British Air but uses American, USAir, and Vueling.   I pounced!   The boys are flying coach on the way home, but it was actually cheaper to have them in business on the way there.    To say that I'm anticipating this plane experience is an understatement.  This is a once in a lifetime thing - I doubt I will ever fly business class again...  But I'm happy to have splurged the extra money for this trip.   The fare did not last - it was gone by that afternoon.

Lodging:

Now came the hunt for good lodging.   I set a max budget of  €1000/week for lodging.  I was able to stay within that for all but 3 weeks.  Sometimes well below that budget.   Unfortunately, we ran into 3 cities that blew the budget... London, Nice, and Paris.  Paris is €250 over budget, Nice is €30 over budget, and London rings in at a whopping €960 over budget.   Fortunately, it all averaged out - and the final tally of lodgings for the entire trip is €9002.  Only 2 euro over the budget.  Thank goodness for less expensive places like Riposto and Prague.

I used every resource I could find to identify lodging.   It turns out there has been a lot of consolodation in this space.  Homeaway and VRBO are now the same company.  AirBnB offered many of the same properties.   I'd identify a property using homeaway, tripadvisor etc.... then search for that same property elsewhere to see if I could better the price.   I was surprised that AirBnB prices tended to be slightly higher than Homeaway.

My criteria for the lodging was as follows:   Had to be in city center, near the touristy stuff; Had to fit the budget.  Had to have a kitchen;  Had to have wifi!!!!!  Had to have a washing machine.   The last one was very important since we are travelling light.   I expect to be doing laundry every few nights.   Depending on the location, it also might have required AC.   (I was less worried about AC in London than I was in Aix-en-Provence....)  My 2nd tier criteria was 2 bedroom...  So I could be physically separate from the boys.   I can even pull the mom line of  "Go To Your Room!"   All but one of the apartments have 2 bedrooms. The boys will be roughing it in Bologna on a sleeper sofa for 2 nights.  Should be interesting since one is already 6' tall.

I'll save the train planning for another post.