We didn't want to be weighed down by luggage so we invested in actual backpackers backpacks to take. We bought ours from Academy Sports but you can order them online or get them at an outdoor store. The type of luggage we took allowed us to be very mobile and travel with ease. Along with our own pack each, we also took a camera backpack for when we walked around the city during the day without our luggage. Here is an example list of items we took:
Money belts (handy to have, but you'll get stares, never had our money stolen though!)
Plug adapter/volt adaptor (bc Europe is at a different voltage and the actual sockets are different)
1 Queen flat sheet/pillow case (folded it in half and used it as a lining in our hostels)
Fancy camera with extra SD cards
Guidebooks
Journal/Pen (this was a fantastic idea, we love reading about all the details our mind forgets over time)
Bicycle chains/locks for our zippers
Ponchos
Bug spray
Spork/Pocket knife (you never know when you'll need one and we picnicked a lot)
Chacos, sneakers and shower shoes (I only wore my sneakers once)
1 bath towel
Only 4 pairs of bottoms and about 8 shirts (we ended up only doing laundry once, saved us a ton of room)
One time use laundry soap/dryer sheet packet
Copies of our passports and all our reservations
Empty bottle (for water, we used it a ton, saved us lots of $$)
TP travel roll
Compass (we used this daily, saved us a lot of time)
Blister bandaids
Assortment of meds (pepto, ibprophen, tums...)
Hand Sanitizer
I carried our only bath bag and we used a lot of the same stuff to save space like toothpaste, shampoo, etc. At the end my bag only weight 21 lbs and Kit's weighed 20lbs and we traveled in Europe for 12 days. I've packed for weekend trips and couldn't get out of the house for less than 50lbs! We were pretty impressed. Keep in mind, we were in the backpacking mentality, so we packed/dressed for practicality not exclusively for fashion. It was the best way to go and we'll definitely do it for our next time around.
Before we left we gave a very detailed itinerary to both our parents. Good enough that if we went missing, hopefully someone could trace our footsteps and see what went wrong. We included train numbers and times, hotel addressees and phone numbers and even a copy of our passports. You just never know.
Europe Adventure
Day 0
The day had finally come! The day before we flew out, we drove to Dallas and stayed with our friend Brie. We left our truck at her place and she drove us to the airport early the next morning. We then sat through our 8 1/2 hour flight to Paris, France!
Day 1
We landed around 10:30am and managed to board our metro to the train station in Paris. From there we took our first train ride to Caen France.
Caen was the closest town to Normandy for our DDay tour. Normandy was all booked up hotel wise, so the plan was to stay the night in Caen, then take an early train to Normandy for our all day tour. Caen is very small, industrial town and no tourist in site. This was the only time where we had to take a taxi to our hotel, 17 Euros. There weren't any buses in site and they sure didn't have a metro.
The hotel creeped me out. It was in the middle of an industrial site, no restaurants nearby so no dinner for us, hence we gathered what snacks we had accrued thus far.
The next morning we get to the front desk to turn in our key and no soul in site. Shit. We didn't have any phone numbers and we were out in the middle of BFE. I start to panic. Suddenly a Hispanic guy our age with a backpack too drops in the office, turns in his room key and leaves. We look at each other and quickly decide to follow him. He obviously has a plan and we don't. We followed him next door to an empty parking lot where out of nowhere a public bus pulls in. Ah he knew there was a bus stop near by! We quickly follow suite and hop on, but of course the driver doesn't speak a lick of English and is yelling at us for something. Thankfully the Hispanic teenager tells us in English to pay him 1 Euro each to get on. Done. We take a seat and start thanking the guy, telling him that we would have been stranded without him. Come to find out he's from Mexico, just finished school and wanted to see Europe. He's traveling by himself and speaks Spanish, English and French. The bus drops us off in town by a tram and the guy instructs us how to buy our tickets to board the tram to the train station. We couldn't thank him enough. We made our train just in time to Normandy. Lesson here, never be afraid to talk to people. He saved our butts and prevented us from starting our trip on the wrong foot!
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| Enjoying my cheap train station quickie breakfast, a croissant and juice! |
Our DDay tour was incredible and to be there on DDay was just amazing. We saw many different local ceremonies along with the sites. This tour was well worth the 80 Euros/person. First we killed time around town until our tour started.
These are pics from our tour. We visited the National German cemetery, WWII museum, St Mere Eglise Church, Point de Hoc, Utah and Omaha Beach, and the American National WWII cemetery.
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| St Mere Eglise Church |
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| Paratroopers in the stain glass |
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| National German cemetery |
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| Point Du Hoc |
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| Point Du Hoc |
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| All these craters are from oncoming mortars |
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| Kit standing in a mortar crater |
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| Omaha Beach |
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| National American WWII cemetery |
After our amazing tour, we boarded the train again to Paris and stayed in a hotel. I had printed off google walking directions from the station to our hotel and it helped tremendously. Only got lost a couple times and when we broke out the compass we found our way pretty easily. It was 7 stories up and had a window open to the streets of Paris. We felt comfortable here and slept like a baby.
Day 2
Before we checked out of our hotel the manager luckily showed us how to use the Paris metro, so nice of him! This was the first metro experience either of us had up to this point and we were trying our skills out in a huge foreign city. We utilized it because it was cheap. So cheap. Once we figured it out we loved it and felt like pros later that day. We navigated to our hostel first that morning to drop off our luggage, then headed back out to explore Paris France. Most hostels before check in time will allow you to leave your luggage in a guarded luggage room, very helpful. Our hostel here was pretty unique because it was actually a hostel/bar. The bar was up front and the rooms were in a courtyard out back. Pretty legit and only a 15 min walk to the Eiffel tower. We shared it with two girls from Korea, 1 guy from Japan and a guy from a Middle Eastern country that I cant' remember. No one spoke good English, but the Japanese guy snored like a train.
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| Bar portion of our hostel |
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| We slept in a room of 6 here in Paris, only 4 bunks shown |
We saw the Eiffel Tower and even went up to the second floor. You can go to the third floor but it's not recommended because from that high up it's hard to make out anything below you, so the second floor is recommended.
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| Favorite picture from the entire trip |
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| Filled almost to the ceiling |
That night we had our first picnic on the lawn in front the Eiffel tower. We picnicked most of the time we were in Europe because we were on a budget. This forced us to prioritize where our money would go. We looked at it this way, will we remember the sites and tours we see or the food we ate and sat on our tongues for 5 minutes? Well...we chose to spend our money on the experiences, not the food. Turns out we LOVED to picnic. We would venture into these foreign grocery stores and street side farmers markets and haggle with the locals and enjoy fresh local foods. Also, we were always in charge of where we ate, which I always thought we had the best seat in the house. We made a rule that we would eat a nice dinner at a restaurant once with every new town we hit.
That night we snuck back to the the lovely tower at night. Beautiful.
Day 3
We hit the Louvre!
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| Venus |
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| Got our picture with Mona Lisa herself! |
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| Louvring in up! |
The church was amazing. Simply amazing. I kept looking for Quasimodo but never found him.
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| Joan of Arc (we share the same birthday) so I thought this was awesome |
Day 4
Train to Zurich Switzerland! We were pretty ill prepared for this stop in that we didn't get any guidebooks due to the short time we were staying and we didn't get maps. It was also a bit frustrating figuring out how to buy our subway passes to get to our hotel which we 3x more than what they cost in Paris. They spoke German here which hearing it aloud naturally for this first time was a bit intimidating. It's definitely not as romantic as French or as easily relatable to the English language. Here's what we loved about Zurich!
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| Our hotel was so nice |
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| Very clean shared bathroom right down the hall |
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| Cool room key |
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| Not fans of the expensive metro tickets, 20 CHF/person |
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| Snagged another picnic dinner, only 14.60 CHF total |
Day 5
4 hour train to Rome! We were most excited for this location, given the amount of history here. First we made it to our hostel via metro/walking and they told us they were booked despite our reservation. The owners felt really bad. We were pretty upset at first, until they told us their sister hostel had room for us and it was located 10 minutes from the Trevi Fountain. Ok we'll take it! We were in a 10 person room which had lockers for our things. We had guys from Argentina, Brazil, Spain and a couple from Australia in our room.
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| Door from the street, you had to buzz up to have it open |
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| Gated door inside the courtyard, you had to buzz again to have it open |
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| Our room of 10 bunk beds |
Day 6
First we knocked out the Colessuem since our booked noted that the crowd arrives around lunch time.
Right across the way were Roman ancient ruins. We followed two steps behind but within ear shot of tours so that we didn't have to pay.
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| Caesar's cremation site |
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| It was really hot, took frequent breaks in the shade |
After lunch we finally made it to the Trevi Fountain. Local legend states that if you throw a coin in, then you're guaranteed to travel back to Rome in your lifetime. We found out that all the coins are collected every night and fund a soup kitchen through a church.
Then the Pantheon nearby!
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| Picture moment by a fountain out front |
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| Raphael's tomb was inside. Quote inscribed on it, "In life, Nature feared to be outdone by him. In death, she feared she too would die." Beautiful. |
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| View from the top |
We found out that night that our awesome hostel owner, from India and spoke 7 different languages, made dinner for all his guests every night at 8:30pm. Two conditions, you must be on time, and you must eat together as a family. This was such an amazing experience every night in itself. Through this we really got to know our bunk mates, their prior travels and opinions on places they've seen. So cool.
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| Cooking us dinner! |
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| All us passing plates and gathered for dinner, Kit is in the plaid shorts on the couch |
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| So cute with his gelato and guidebook in hand |
Day 7
We got to Vatican City to stand in line a hour before it opened and already the line was 5 blocks long! Luckily we somewhere weaseled a deal to cut. Once inside we toured the Museum, St. Peter's Basilica, St Peter's Square and the Sistine Chapel.
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| Tickets, check! |
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| Imhotep's crypt |
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| View of Rome from behind the walls of the Vatican |
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| We're a bit silly |
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| Map Room |
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| We were in awe of the Map Room |
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| Sistine Chapel herself..had to sneak this picture since NO photography was allowed |
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| St Peter's Basilica |
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| The Dome |
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| St Peter's Square |
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| Davinci Code anyone? |
Next we stopped in two very special churches. One displayed the actual chains released by the angel from Peter's wrists. The second church was St Maria della Vittoria which held Bernini's crypt and his swooning St Teresa in Ecstasy masterpiece. He ended up becoming my favorite Roman artist of the trip.
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| Peter's chains |
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| Swooning St Teresa in Ecstasy |
Day 8
Our last full day in Europe we revisited some of our favorite sites, had a huge authentic feast for lunch at a cafe, saw Bernini's four river's fountain, visisted the church with the remnants of baby Jesus's manger and finished the night with Sangria from a box by the Trevi Fountain. Wouldn't have had it any other way.
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| This coffee cafe came recomended by our book, a place where mostly locals go to. Our book taught us how to specifically order, pay and pick up our mouthwatering coffee/cream slush, a Roman treat. This made us really feel like locals. Win for the McVays! |
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| It was delicioso! |
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| Our last big meal in Rome! |
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| We got free Sexy wine |
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| We splurged and felt like cows afterwards, but it was SO delicious |
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| Bernini's four rivers fountain |
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| Piazza de Popolo where the fountain is located |
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| Remnants from baby Jesus's manger |
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| Our nighttime tradition |
Day 10
Train to Venice! We took the #1 water ferry to San Marco Piazza which gave us a cheap grand tour of the Grand Canal, ventured up the bell tower for a bird's eye view and navigated our way back to the train station. This took about 4 hours because the streets are a nightmare. Very hard to navigate through but we knew that going in and it became a fun game to us.
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| No cars in site, the streets were SO narrow |
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| He was tired of pictures at this point! |
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| Got turned around quite a bit, even with a compass |
We only made Venice a day trip and it worked out great. Overall the people are pretty rude, they charge you money to use every bathroom in the city and there just wasn't much history to it. It was a beautiful city, but I'd only make it a day trip like we did. We had plenty of time to see everything.
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| Grabbed 2 Euro pizza slices for dinner |
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| Then we boarded our night train back to Paris! |
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| The bottom seat pulled out into a bed and he of course made me sleep on the top bunk portion. We got really lucky and only had to share our room with a nice elderly man from Germany. |
Day 11
We had to switch trains at 5:30am in a little town in France, then board another for our last leg of the trip straight back to the airport. We made it in plenty of time and were pretty anxious to get home to Kit's folks and our baby Zeus!
Day 12
Feet finally on US soil.
This trip was amazing. We enjoyed every moment and can't wait to experience this again in new cities. Please don't hesitate if you have any questions! We learned so much from this trip. We're planning a return trip the summer of 2014 before my husband starts law school. Except this time we'll be accompanied by first timers, Brie and Shawn, our best friends from college. We Can't Wait! And this time I'll be more timely with my blog!
