2008 Europe Trip - Germany & Italy

Preparation

We are going to Freiburg, Germany for the Inter Brush expo, and have decided to put together a trip around that. The brush show is April 16th, 17th and 18th in Freiburg, Germany.

We started preparing for the trip in the middle of December. After much stressing regarding dates, lenght of stay, what to do, what to see around the end of January things began to come together. Had my wife and 3 kids each pick one thing that they wanted to do. Had to talk my youngest son out of going to see the Eiffel Tower because it was too far from where we were going to be.

Applied for our passports in beginning of January and received them 3 weeks later.

We've set our travel dates and booked the tickets on Feb 9th. We will be leaving April 10th and returning April 27th. We will fly in and out of Zurich. From Zurich we will travel through Austria to Munich where we will pick-up my sister. Now what to do with those 4 days before we need to be in Freiburg?

One week before trip

Nailing down the itinerary, scrambling to book the hotels, especially in the major cities. I don't feel like driving around Rome with a wife, 3 kids and my sister looking for a place to stay. I'm pretty sure you could do this without making the reservations, however, seat of the pants travel is what I did before I had kids.

Although it has consumed a lot of time, I feel fairly confident that the places we are booking are going to be great places to stay. We've done our homework and the majority of reviews have been good. The cost is more than we bargained for, but that's due more to the dollar vs. euro exchange rate than anything (€1.57 to the $1). In other words a €64 room is a $100 and a €100 room is $157. Sorry but this is not Europe on $15 a day. In a way, the stress of finding places to say has allowed me to feel more relaxed.