At the Christmas gathering, we discussed the trip. Important considerations were 1) if everyone could go this year, and 2) Would October be too cold for us?  more…

A map of the British Isles

I opened up the Rick Steves’ Great Britain 2008 book for the first time tonight and learned a little something right off the bat.

• • England is in the south part of Britain.
  • Britain is the name of the island.
  • Great Britain is the political union of England, Scotland, and Wales.
  • The United Kingdom adds Northern Ireland.
  • The British Isles (not a political entity) also includes the independent Republic of Ireland.

Mom, Cindy, Kristy, Kerry, and I are going to Great Britain! We’ve been talking about taking a “girls trip” to Europe for a while, and had been planning to go in 2010.  On Thanksgiving evening we took a walk to the park near Cindy’s house and the topic of our future trip came up.  Kristy asked why we were going in 2010, could we go in 2009?  We all agreed we are anxious to go, so 2009 it is unless “the guys” veto it due to the economy.   I am the designated trip planner so I need to get started!

We will likely go to Great Britain, flying into London, England and back home from Edinburgh, Scotland. We are talking about a 10 day trip, which sounds just about right. One week wouldn’t be long enough to do anything beyond London, but we don’t want to be gone too long since we all are leaving families at home without us.  We would like to be in the UK for Mom’s bithday, so tentative dates would be Wed, Sept 30 – Sat, Oct 10.

I know everyone thought I was stalling, or taking too long to show pictures, but I really have a good reason. We had 6,172 photos from our trip. Yep, that’s right, SIX THOUSAND+ pictures to go through. You didn’t really want to see all of those, did you? So after a lot of work, I have chosen 750 photos, geotagged them, cleaned em up in Picasa, and uploaded them to the web. I had planned to upload them to Flickr, but their website is causing me problems. So, I found a new website for displaying photos that I think is even better, and I couldn’t be happier to display my photos on SmugMug. Check out the website, it is a great place to keep all your digital photos.

Here is the link to our Europe trip photos: www.skaustin.smugmug.com

If there are photos you like, please give them the thumbs up.  Just put your mouse over the photo to see the thumbs up/down voting.

Stuff I do not want to forget about in twenty years:

• The swiss franc was about equal to the dollar so it was easy to calculate how much things were really costing me (hint: a lot). The euro was very high to the dollar, so I would add 60% to every price to get my true cost. Converted from both francs and euros, $60 seemed to be the usual total for meals, both lunch and dinner.
• Italian showers are all little. Even if the rest of the bathroom is spacious there will be a tiny little shower in the corner, always a pre-fab unit. My personal theory why it is so small is because Europeans use the bidet frequently so they don’t care about a large shower.
• Favorite parts of Italy: driving to Volterra, Pigelleto Nature Reserve, the hilltown of Cetona as seen from a distance (did not stop there), the belvedere Etruscan park with the caves near Cetona, the waving wheat fields in Val D’Orcia, the villas along the shores of Lake Como.
• Favorite parts of Switzerland: All of it I’ve seen. Driving to Lauterbrunnen, the mountains around Lake Brienz, the giant mountains along the austostrada heading to Belinzona.
• Kevin and I were checking out a cave in the bronze-age Etruscan dwellings near Cetona when Kevin realized there were bats in there with us. One was flying around us to check us out.
• Kevin and I carried matching Eagle Creek bags. Mine had a pink tag, Kevin’s had a blue tag.
• There is no fresh-brewed ice tea available. Some places have Lipton in a can.  When I ordered Coke Light (Diet Coke) and Kevin ordered regular coke, the restaurant would always put a lemon slice in Kev’s coke to differentiate it from mine.