Wowza!! We made it through the whole trip! Are you exhausted from reading?? Today I thought I would share my final thoughts of our trip.
The most Americans we saw were in Florence and Cinque Terre, Italy. It seemed like we didn't see many Americans in many other places. Our hotel rooms seem to get a little bit better each night. We had booked three of them before we left and did the rest on the fly. It actually worked out really well! Many of our rooms required us to put the room key in a holder for the lights to turn on. There was also the sleeping bag thing that came up multiple nights and the two beds pushed together.
All of the travel blogs we read before leaving never said to have a "one night stand" in any city, meaning we should stay in each city at least two nights. Well, that only happened once, and you know what? It worked out just fine for us. I don't think we would have been able to do that without a rental car because we always had somewhere to keep our luggage. We were very happy we chose to rent a car. The tolls and petrol did get a little pricey, but I think it still ended up being cheaper than paying for trains. The city roads were crazy! It was very easy to drive in the country and on the highways, but the cities got a little confusing. In the city, we tried finding a hotel that provided free parking. That worked out most nights, but if not, we tried to park away from city center so that parking was not so expensive.
We could not have survived without data on our phone. We had purchased paper maps just in case, but they were basically worthless. We used the maps on our phone which were awesome! The maps even gave us routes with the fastest public transportation routes which was SO HELPFUL! We brought along back up chargers for our phones which were a necessity. Thanks to my Grandma Mark and Nolan for gifting Matt battery chargers the last couple years!! We were able to charge our phones and chargers in the car or our hotel room and then recharge our phones with the back ups during the day. The best thing we packed was an umbrella! It rained quite a bit, and we were so happy we had it!
Lastly, never be in a hurry to eat anywhere. Even the fast food restaurants took a while. The pubs in London let us pay right after we ordered which saved us a ton of time. There were several times we waited over 30 minutes to get our check. I think we could have left so many restaurants without paying, but we waited each time. If you are in a hurry, street vendors seem to be the best bet!
We walked A LOT! Tennis shoes were a MUST for this pregnant lady! I brought some cute sandals and my Converse which I tried wearing the first few days. My feet were miserable and Matt got really sick of hearing me complain. So I gave up and wore my tennis shoes even with my dresses. It was so worth it!
Here is a breakdown of our trip:
11 days
9 countries
4066 km driven (2526 miles)
> 70 miles walked
156,437 steps walked
419 flights of stairs taken
and
1 growing baby!
If you missed any of the posts from our trip, just click on the city name below, and it will take you there!
Thanks for reading! Next week it's back to real life with my regular inconsistent blogging!
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