The Best Laid Plans

Yikes. We leave today!

Eight months on the road. That's the plan. But what will we actually do? Where will we go and for how long?

Our original thoughts were to spend 2-3 months in a given country. We would find a home on AirBnB or VRBO and really get to know a few places. We wanted to be visitors, not tourists. Our initial target list for countries included Spain, France and Italy and perhaps our itinerary would allow for one or two other countries.

One other exciting possibility was to actually learn a foreign language. While both Liz and I had studied languages in high school and had traveled the world extensively for work, we fit that old cliché, “What do you call a person who only speaks one language? An American.” An old item on both of our bucket lists include learning a language and fortunately, we both wanted to learn Spanish, so Spain would be a place that we would spend the most time in.

OK, so we had the semblance of a plan. Eight months, three to five countries, learn Spanish, have fun.

As Summer gave way to Fall and then Fall became Winter, Liz and I would frequently talk about our trip and things we should do. We shared our plans with family and friends and got lots of ideas. Meanwhile, we hadn’t made a single reservation. What was becoming clear is that there were no bad ideas, we wanted to go everywhere and do everything. And we were becoming paralyzed by the abundance. Finally, I made a New Year’s resolution that we would build the definitive plan in January.

In keeping with this resolution, I made a list of countries that we would visit and assigned months to each of them based upon weather. Liz has a very narrow band of temperature that she finds comfortable – somewhere between 60-80°F (no wonder we live in the Bay Area). To accommodate this, we would prioritize Northern Europe in the summer and Southern Europe in the Spring and Fall. And this first list included seven countries: United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland, Norway, France, Spain and Italy with the latter two each getting two months. A great start to an awesome adventure.

From here, I built a weekly calendar in Excel as a way to plan and capture all of the trip logistics including accommodations, flights, car rentals, etc. And with this all in place, it was now time to make our first reservation – our flight from San Francisco. Liz and I are both frequent fliers with United, so naturally I looked at cities in Europe where United had a non-stop from SFO.  There are five: London, Paris, Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich.

We chose Paris and then confirmed with a former colleague of mine, JB Monnier, that we would meet he and his wife, Caroline, in Paris to start our trip. So, now the start and end of our trip was in place. We would leave SFO on April 27^th and return (also from Paris) on December 21^st just in time to enjoy Christmas with the family back home. I booked the United roundtrip on March 3^rd. We would be leaving on April 27^th which meant we had less than eight weeks to plan our eight-month trip. Wow, it was time to get into high gear. Procrastination was no longer our friend.

And so we mobilized. We made lists of everything we wanted to do and then found a spot on the calendar for it. While in Spain, surely, we wanted to get to Barcelona and Madrid, but wouldn’t we also want to head south to Granada and Valencia? And with Portugal so close by, how can we not go there? While in France, can we really skip the Loire Valley and Bordeaux or St. Tropez? And haven’t we always wanted to sail in the Greek Isles? Really, who hasn’t wanted to do that?

The list went on an on. There was almost nothing that we didn’t want to do. My daughter, Kristin, has this saying when we feel like we just want more and more – ask for a smaller bowl. But we failed to do that. Instead we simply filled up the calendar.

And here’s where we landed. We will now be visiting 21 countries and the longest we will spend in any one place (i.e. the same house) is two weeks. How did we go from three to five countries, several months in each, and learn to speak Spanish, to 21 countries and moving every week? We should have listened to Nancy Reagan’s advice and “just say no”, but that didn’t happen. We said “yes” to everything. Now mind you, this will still be an epic trip, so I am not complaining. It just won’t be the trip we originally had in mind and don’t expect us to come back speaking fluent Spanish, mi amigo.

Here is the list of countries: France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Kenya, Rwanda, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Turkey and Morocco.

OK, Kenya and Rwanda (week 19 & 20)? How did that happen? Recently, I completed six years on the board of Water For People, a fantastic NGO that brings water and sanitation services to nine countries in the developing world, including Rwanda. I traveled with them to Rwanda in 2015 and it was one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. They have planned another trip to Rwanda in September and this time I get to bring Liz along. We are both really excited. Oh, and while traveling all of that distance to Africa, surely we should go on safari somewhere and that’s where Kenya fits in.

Egypt, Jordan and Israel you ask (week 28-31)? Well, we heard they have pyramids in Egypt, Petra in Jordan and a wailing wall in Israel. Who can say no to that? We couldn’t.

Poland (week 25-26)? OK, this one is a bit strange, but I learned of a Holocaust Tour sponsored by an outfit in London with a professor from UVA as our guide. Seven days visiting four concentration camps (including Auschwitz) and the Warsaw ghetto. This should be equal parts emotionally draining and educational.

We will also be doing the Camino de Santiago with REI (week 5). After watching the movie, “The Way”, starring Martin Sheen, I added hiking the Camino to my bucket list – an ancient pilgrimage, 500 miles from the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela. In preparation for our Europe adventure, I researched the hike and found several blogs/articles with disparaging comments (like this one) about hiking miles and miles of roads adjacent to highways. I scratched it off my bucket list. That is until I learned that REI led hiking trips on The Way. Here is their description of their trip, “There are many routes to reach the holy city of Santiago de Compostela, but this 9-day journey takes us on some of the oldest and least-traveled paths.”, and I was sold. We will do this at the end of May.

And we will be visiting with friends and family while we are in Europe. Four of my five children and their families will be joining us (or rather we will be joining them) for parts of our trip. Travis and Stephanie first in London (week 11) and then again in the Pyrenees (week 13). We will be joined there by Jordan and Ashley. We meet up with Jason and Lauren on the Amalfi coast in Italy (week 21) and Gareth and Sarah in Germany and Austria (week 15).

Liz’s brothers, Dick and Jack, and their spouses, Jane and Anne, respectively, will join us for a week in Tuscany (week 22). In addition to JB & Caroline Monnier, who we will meet in Paris (week 1), we will be sailing the Greek Isles with another former Bentley colleague of mine, Ted Lamboo and his wife, Ellen (week 8). We will catch up with Alan and Karen Farkas in Gassin (week 9 & 10), near St. Tropez, as we did last year. Our friend Carrie Neiderer will join us for the Holocaust tour in Poland (week 25 & 26) to be followed by a few days in Prague and our friend, Cindy Black, may be joining us in Israel (week 30 & 31). And, finally, Karen Quint and Chris Griffin will join us for a week of hiking in the Jungfrau region of the Swiss Alps (week 18) – my favorite hiking place on the planet!

We feel so fortunate to be able to share this experience with so many friends and family. And speaking of sharing, the purpose of this blog is to keep you all up to date on what we are up to and to stay in touch with what you are doing. Please feel free to share your ideas and experiences with us. We have said “yes” to everything so far and I don’t think that is going to change anytime soon.

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Bon voyage, mes amies.