Hi everyone, I have decided to start attempting to write a blog because I am hoping to have a place to share some of my trip reports beyond the short updates I send
out via email or Facebook. Before I head off to Stanford in the fall I have two major trips planned, and I figured this would be
the best way to offer some insight into my planning and allow you to
participate in some armchair travel. I have no idea how often I’ll be updating
this, but as new ideas and details come to mind, I hope to make a few posts regarding some of the logistics and planning that is going into the trip before I actually leave on May 15th.
As you may have gathered by now, most of my writing here
will primarily be travel-related, but I may throw in a post about something
else from time-to-time. At some point I’ll probably go back and write about a
few of my past trips, but for now, I’ll be sticking to talking about my
upcoming trip(s). I’ll start at the beginning – From planning an itinerary to
booking hotels and airfare, I hope to offer some insight into my methodology
when researching and planning a trip, then a bit of a travelogue (and tips) from each
location once I have visited.
Now, onto my trips: The first is a 7-week trip in Europe, visiting
primarily Northern destinations. The second is a 3-week trip to Istanbul and a
couple Baltic countries. The former begins on May 15th, the latter
on August 7th. I haven’t fully planned the latter trip yet, so I
will be focusing on the former for now.
So, first things first…
The Itinerary:
I knew I had a large chunk of time available to travel, since I had no plans between when I graduate (May 10th or so – nothing official really) and the summer nationals in Vegas in July. I was considering visiting Asia or Australia, but the combination of being too expensive and my traveling alone made me decide to stick to Europe for this summer.
With the entry of Norwegian Air Shuttle into the US market,
airfares to Scandinavia have dropped tremendously. In the past, flights like
New York to Milan were often the cheapest option, but now many cities in
Scandinavia are cheaper, even for summer travel. Since I am crediting my
flights to Aegean Airlines now (more on that another time – they are the
shortcut to Star Alliance Gold status), I wanted to fly either US Air or SAS. I
found cheap flights on SAS that fit my schedule perfectly, so I was all set: I
had a start date of May 15th in Copenhagen and an end date of July 9th
in Stockholm… The challenge was filling in 54 days of blanks.
As usual, I started my planning by exploring Google Maps and
deciding if there was anywhere I wanted to ensure I could visit no matter what.
This time around, those places were Reykjavik, Paris, and St. Petersburg. With
those cities in mind, I started building an itinerary playing connect-the-dots
on Google maps. Initially I thought I would spend time in the Baltic countries
before/after Russia, but due to logistical and time considerations caused by
needing a Russian visa, I decided to save those for my August trip.
Though my destinations were not geographically close
together, getting around Europe is super-easy thanks to the combination of
budget airlines, great train systems, and the extensive network of many regular
airlines. In many cases, it is almost as quick to go from Paris to Amsterdam by
train as it is to fly from Copenhagen to Madrid – Just because places seem far
apart doesn’t mean they are difficult to get to. Of course, I still tried to
optimize my itinerary to avoid doubling back a bunch, but even places like
Reykjavik and St. Petersburg really aren’t far-fetched at all when taking full
advantage of the wide variety of transportation options available across Europe.
I won’t go into all the details of how I eventually wound up
with my current itinerary, but I mostly pieced it together using Google Maps,
picking out cities and places that seemed interesting and then considering the
practicality of reaching that place. Picking cities was the easy part though…
The hard part was deciding how long to stay in each place.
I’m a fast-paced traveler. I try to maximize my time in
each city by avoiding mid-day transit options, and I usually try to hit the
ground running in each place I visit. It is a very tiring style of travel, but
it is also extremely productive and rewarding. Of course after a week or two of
this, I need a couple days to really relax and just enjoy whatever city I am
visiting. Since I know my travel-style, I knew I needed to add a day or two of
down time for every couple weeks of travel.
Tripadvisor is my best friend. It is an invaluable
trip-planning resource, and I spend countless hours browsing information for
each city I plan to visit. While I usually have a general idea how long I want
to spend in each city, Tripadvisor helps me adjust that to be even more
accurate.
It’s impossible to plan everything perfectly though, and
depending on flexibility, it can even be fun not to plan at all! For my summer
trip last year, I planned a start city and an end city and a general route, but
didn't do much beyond that. Since I had a rail pass, I was completely flexible,
and I wound up visiting several places I never would have visited if I had
planned extremely rigidly. Unfortunately this luxury of flexibility isn't
always possible, and for this year since I’ll be relying a lot more on flights,
last-minute plans simply weren't an option. Over-planning definitely is a
problem, but sometimes you have to lock yourself into certain dates or
locations. As always, when planning, being flexible is vital: Be open to
changing dates, rearranging itineraries, cutting cities that are inconvenient, and
adding cities that you stumble upon in your research. My initial itinerary was
very different from the one I have now!
With all that in mind, after several weeks of rather intense
planning, I now have a working itinerary and am in the process of booking
hotels, trains, planes, buses, tours, and countless other things. Here’s my
itinerary:
Copenhagen
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5/16/2014 (Morning)
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5/18/2014 (Evening)
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Trondheim
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5/18/2014 (Evening)
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5/21/2014 (Morning)
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Alesund
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5/21/2014 (Evening)
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5/22/2014 (Evening)
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Hurtigruten Ferry
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5/22/2014 (Evening)
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5/23/2014 (Afternoon)
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Bergen
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5/23/2014 (Afternoon)
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5/24/2014 (Morning)
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Oslo
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5/24/2014 (Evening)
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5/27/2014 (Morning)
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Reykjavik
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5/27/2014 (Morning)
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6/1/2014 (Morning)
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Glasgow (Day), Inverness
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6/1/2014 (Morning)
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6/4/2014 (Morning)
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Edinburgh
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6/4/2014 (Morning)
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6/6/2014 (Evening)
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London
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6/6/2014 (Evening)
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6/8/2014 (Morning)
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Paris
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6/8/2014 (Afternoon)
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6/13/2014 (Morning)
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Geneva (Day), Interlaken
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6/13/2014 (Evening)
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6/15/2014 (Evening)
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Lucerne
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6/15/2014 (Evening)
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6/17/2014 (Evening)
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Frankfurt
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6/17/2014 (Evening)
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6/20/2014 (Morning)
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Trier
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6/20/2014 (Morning)
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6/21/2014 (Afternoon)
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Amsterdam
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6/21/2014 (Afternoon)
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6/25/2014 (Morning)
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Moscow
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6/25/2014 (Afternoon)
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6/29/2014 (Overnight Train)
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Veliky Novgorod
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6/29/2014 (Morning)
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6/30/2014 (Evening)
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St. Petersburg
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6/30/2014 (Evening)
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7/5/2014 (Morning)
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Stockholm
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7/5/2014 (Morning)
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7/9/2014 (Morning)
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As you can see, I will be relying heavily on morning and evening transportation options, and will be making a few very short overnight stops. I don’t like sleeper trains, so I tend to avoid those even though they save time. I will be forced to take one to Veliky Novgorod, but otherwise will likely steer clear of them.
| I'm drawing a bat-figure across Europe! (drawn using GCMap) |
I'm really excited about
this trip actually happening, and given the amount of time I have devoted to
planning it so far, I hope things go off relatively smoothly. I'm a firm
believer in Murphy's Law when applied to travel though, so if I make my first 5
or 6 transportation connections, I'll start to expect a worker's strike, a flat
tire on a bus, or maybe even poor WiFi at one of my accommodations... Oh, the
horror.
I'll try to share some more details soon, but given that May 15th is rapidly approaching, I have a lot of details to work out before then!
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