European trip: How it all begen   On one winter day in 2007 my hubby looked at me & expressed to me that he felt sorry for me for having to sit at home all day long. I think he realized that even stay at home Mom’s need a break from the daily routines…..more importantly he thought that I needed a vacation. Yes, it’s true that we had returned from a month long vacation in Thailand just a few months before. But Thailand is my homeland, so for me it wasn’t really a vacation. My hubby sat down with me & asked me if I still wanted to go to New York for a little vacation. In the past I had planned on taking a trip by myself to explore New York City, and spring time seemed like a good time to visit the Big Apple. After checking airfares online, he came home and told me that the ticket price to New York is almost the same price as flying from our home in Los Angeles to Paris.  Wow, I thought! Is my Hubby planning on sending me to Europe instead of New York City? Of course that sounded like an awesome idea and I told him that I’d love to go to Paris, the City of Light! I started to study a map of Europe and seeing how geographically close all of the other European countries were to France it inspired me to want to see more of Europe than just Paris. So this was my first plan:   1st plan   Germany France Luxembourg Netherlands Belgium         But the more I looked at these European maps the more I changed my plans. I looked for more airline ticket prices and I found a ticket to Frankfurt, Germany that was cheaper than flying to Paris. I also started to research travel plans on Eurorail to see how many countries in Europe I’d be able to visit on a train pass. So, once again I started to change my plans:   2nd plan   Germany France Luxembourg Netherlands Belgium Spain Portugal Italy Switzerland United Kingdom     3rd plan   Germany France Luxembourg Netherlands Belgium Switzerland Italy Austria Poland Czech Republic Liechtenstein United Kingdom      4th plan     Germany Austria Liechtenstein Switzerland Italy France Luxembourg Belgium Netherlands United Kingdom   While my hubby was at work I wrote him an e-mail with my new plans. His response was shock. He thought how could I start my plans with the idea of visiting only one country and then change them to include 10 countries?? Haha, well…it made a lot of sense to me. Why would anyone want to travel around the world and only visit one place when there were a dozen more places that I could potentially see? After some thought my hubby asked if I would like to take Mac with me on this European adventure I was planning? Mac had already been to a dozen countries and the idea that he could visit at least 10 more seemed really nice to us. We were kind of collecting countries for our son and a trip to Europe would bring his total amount of countries visited to 22! Not many 3 year olds have been to that many countries…and we all love traveling so much so the idea of bringing my son along with me seemed perfect. Besides, McKinley would be a lovely companion for me considering that my Hubby wasn’t going to be traveling with me. While researching the trip I discovered that I wouldn’t have to pay extra money for the Eurorail pass or the hotel rooms since my son is under the age of 4. The only thing I’d have to pay extra for is his airplane ticket. My next step was finding the best, most child friendly plan after settling on the idea that I would also bring Mac to Europe. I decided that I would go with my 4th plan:     Germany Austria Liechtenstein Switzerland Italy France Luxembourg Belgium Netherlands United Kingdom     I then spent days researching on the internet for appropriate places for me and my little guy to stay, what to see, and most importantly the train time tables. I created a solid plan & schedule that I knew would be easy for us to follow. In retrospect I found this plan to be very rigid and unforgiving as I had little room for mistakes or relaxation….but for us to see so much in a couple of weeks I had to stick to the schedule I made. I knew that I would have to keep moving & moving. This wasn’t a trip for relaxation.   On this trip I only had a backpack to carry our stuff, a camera bag for my electronic gear, and a small backpack for McKinley to put his little toys & blanket in, and a durable stroller that could hold our gear and Mac when he got tired. I found that even though we didn’t have so much stuff it was still very hard getting around in certain places…especially in the subways, in the trains, and in places like Venice where there were so many bridges and obstacles. During my planning of this trip I probably didn’t foresee some of these difficulties, but it turned out that my son McKinley would be a lot more helpful to me (a struggling Mommy/backpacker) & he’d often give me a helping hand.   I have so much more to write about…especially about traveling in Europe with a 3 year old……but that will have to be my next entry. Please check back soon…. Au Revoir