Our European vacation is just 25 days away! Five countries, sixty days, 21 different hotels, apartments and inns, planes, trains, and rental cars, all selected and reserved.

The highlights of our itinerary:

We start our trip with a long weekend in New York. We’ve booked a hotel in Times Square which is an experience in itself. We should see a few museums, the Statue of Liberty, take in a broadway show, and eat at least one slice of regular pizza and eat a fresh NY bagel.

Then a red-eye flight to Spain for a week in a central Madrid apartment to begin our vacation and practice our Spanish. The weather in Madrid in summer is HOT, and we will need a day or two to shake off the jet lag and acclimate to the heat and new culture.  We pick up our brand new leased Renault Kangoo and begin our driving tour North to cooler climates. First to Burgos and then to Bilbao to take in our first experience of the Basque country and then we arrive in Navarro to stay a whole week in a country house, very remote – no internet! – but within easy driving distance of Pamplona, San Sebastian, the southwest of France, etc.  We then head east to Zaragoza for a two-day stop and then off to the big city of Barcelona for three days of Catalan city life. Heading south we stop at Valencia for two more days, then Cuenca for a day where our hotel is a restored convent overlooking houses hanging from sheer rock walls, and then finally back to Madrid for an overnight stay ending our three week tour before flying to Rome.

We’re spending a week in Italy, five days in a central Rome apartment within throwing distance to the Spanish Steps, and then we take the train north to Florence for three days.

A short flight from Florence finds us in downtown Paris for three days. We’ve booked a hotel in the heart of the city and hope to take in as many cultural stops as we can fit in, along with some fine french cuisine. We will see the Mona Lisa! And find the cafe where Hemingway wrote many of his novels.

Another short flight brings us to Dublin. We’ve got a hotel in the heart of downtown which is imminently walkable. So many things to see there, but surely we’ll tour the Guinness factory! We pick up our rental car at the end of our Dublin stay and head out on our driving tour of Irish countryside. First south to Kilkenny where we’re staying on the grounds of the Kilkenny Castle. Lisa wants to take a night trip to the Leap Castle, the world’s most haunted castle, our second night in Kilkenny. Then further south the the Kensale on the Irish coast for a night. We spend a night above a pub in the tiny town of Kenmare, the perfect stopping point on our driving tour of the ring of Kerry. Then two nights at an Irish inn known for its hospitality as we tour the Dingle Peninsula. Heading north, we spend a long three day weekend in Galway, perhaps biking one of the remote Aran islands, before ending our tour of Ireland with two days at the Dromoland Castle, an unbelievably restored castle where we’ll celebrate Mallory’s 16th birthday.

We fly from Shannon to London for our final week of our trip. We’ve found an apartment bordering Trafalgar Square in central London. The red tour bus that you can get on and off of to see all of London literally stops in front of our flat.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime trip for our family.  It’s starting to sink in for all of us that this is actually going to happen.

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