Friday, August 30, 2013

Time for another trip...

It is the last long weekend of the summer and time to turn our minds to our next trip. Most of the details have been worked out and in two weeks or so we will be leaving for seven weeks in Europe...two in Switzerland and five in Northern Italy. Switzerland was on Don's list, Italy on both our lists so the trip was created. Some people ask why do you travel for so long, our answer is that once we are there it makes sense to stay awhile and experience the places we visited. The longer we stay, the richer the experience.

The map below shows our intended itinerary, around 1500 km so we are doing Slow Travel this trip...




We fly into Zurich taking the train across Switzerland, then cross the border into Italy through Milan and working our way down to Rome with side trips to Venice, Florence, Cinque Terre, Tuscany and Umbria. We end with a week in Rome.

We are also trying out a new style of accommodations called Air BnB where locals post their homes for rent on a daily basis and take in strangers like us who are willing to pay for the night. I discovered this site when I realized that a hostel in Switzerland costs 200 dollars a night! Way to rich for our budget so we are doing a combination of private home stays and vacation rentals. In fact, we are looking forward to meeting the locals through our stays. Let's see if this is a good idea or not!!