My best friend Natalie stayed with me Sunday night before flying out to San Francisco which was the perfect time for us to properly catch up (aka not via technology) and officially set our itinerary for our Euro vacation. Since she leaves in a few weeks for Turkey for 7 months, this was pretty much the only possible time to work together on our trip.
First, however, we spent a good amount of time enjoying our Whole Foods salad bar finds and catching up about life...
...then jumped head first in to trip planning.
Natalie was my travel buddy during study abroad, so we have a pretty good system down for planning. It includes both of us brainstorming where we want to go and see on a Google Doc, then Natalie working through the logistics of getting from place to place and finding good deals on transportation while I lounge around consulting from time to time, then me researching hostels and actual activities and restaurants in the cities and rearranging the itinerary a bit so it flows well. Minus a few blips (mostly on my part), it's worked well for us in the past, and I am so excited for our newest adventure.
Our original plan included the south of France, but after looking in to the logistics a bit more and keeping our sanity in mind, we cut it out and are spending more time in Portugal and Spain.
Our final itinerary includes Paris, Lisbon, Porto, Faro, Sevilla, Granada, Madrid, and back to Paris. It's a lot of places to hit, but I think we have it set up well and have a good mix of exploring days and relaxing days.
When we finally finished, I indulged in pinning tons of photos of all the beautiful places we are visiting :)
I am so thankful for the time I had with Natalie, especially since there is a good chance I won't see her again until we meet up in Paris at the end of August, and for our fabulous trip! I have already been looking forward to it, but now that we have a set itinerary, I have even more to look forward to.
No comments:
Post a Comment