Lots of things considered....

Our family in Florence

The other day, I read the blog of another family that is living in Europe. It struck me so funny, because she posted about what you don't usually get to read about on travel blogs. I had to laugh at her brutal honesty, because I totally "got it." She talked about the "planning of the trips" and the fact that a successful and fun trip can take hours and hours of planning and thought - especially when you have; other people to worry about, only so much time to see what you really want to see in a city, a budget to consider, transportation, hotel, parking, food, entertainment etc. Even a 3 day get-away can consume hours of time. Hotels don't fit our family, parking rates at airports vary considerably, not all cities have easy public transportation or parking, not all hotels have refrigerators, you can't pack too much or too little unless you want to pay extra costs on airlines or spend extra money on buying things that you might have forgotten etc... When you go on lots of trips - you learn to do things economically - my thinking is that I would rather go on 10 vacations economically than blow all of our money on a one time, no costs considered, 1 week vacation (but of course, that takes loads of planning). You always see the fun photos from travel blogs and everything looks effortless, yet the "behind the scenes" preparation is enormous.

I often enjoy the planning of a trip, but it can be a lot of work. When we leave Europe someday, I don't want to have any regrets with regard to "places we wish we had gone." One of the reasons we love to go on a cruise is because we don't have to worry about cooking, cleaning, picking restaurants, grocery shopping etc. You still have to consider the sightseeing and getting there, but at least the food and accommodation is taken care of. If it were just Bryan and I to consider, of course it wouldn't be nearly as time consuming, but to make sure our 3 kids are; having fun, entertained, and even somewhat educationally stimulated (and they are also extremely picky eaters to boot) can be a big task.  

In all of our traveling, we have only had a couple of screw ups: the time in Athens when the Greeks went on strike, and we were stuck in the city center without a train- we ended up hiring a taxi - which of course was much more expensive. The time in Barcelona, where it was 9:00pm, and we had to hire 2 taxi's (Bryan and Bailey in one, and Camden, Mia, and I in another) to get to our hotel and ended up at the Police Station because they couldn't find the hotel (they thought it was a scam, but after 120.00 euro - we finally found the hotel). Had I planned the transportation from the airport to the hotel, it could have been alleviated (to know that we could have paid 20 euro to go by train, if I had planned better - was so frustrating). The time in Egypt, when we were stuck in the backroom of a "Perfume Dealer" on a less than desirable street (picture Indiana Jones going through the old town - no kidding), but we didn't want to offend our guide and ended up feeling extremely pressured to buy something - we could have avoided that one  (one of our friends ended up in the exact same situation, so it was a known issue), or the time on top of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where I shook the hand of an extremely reluctant Palestinian Man (had I done my research, I would have known that this is total taboo for a Palestinian Man - especially in such a religious setting (our guide later told us, that he considered me to be Bryan's "property", and it was against everything in him to shake my hand) - again a little research would have helped :-)

I really enjoyed the lady's honesty on her blog. When my kids are adults, and read back on their travels, I want them to remember that the planning (behind the scenes) was not always as easy as the traveling seemed :-).