At last we got to Rome, again we tagged on a couple extra days, so we had three full days to explore. As a lover of art history and a person who took a whole course fully based on ancient Roman art, I wanted to do and see a lot.
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Colosseum
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Roman Forum
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Palatine Hill
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Trajan’s Column
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Vatican City
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Pantheon
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Trevi Fountain
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Spanish Steps
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St Peter’s Basilica
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Piazza Navona
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Castel Sant’Angelo
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Borghese Gallery
We also really wanted to go to Pompeii or Ostia Antica, however, with all the other things on the list, we put it off for next time. Again we arranged everything by location and the days things were open. We also made our reservations for the Borghese Gallery and the Vatican Museums in advance. By the time we started planning Rome, we were pretty tired and did not go as in-depth as we were about Paris and weren’t as prepared which may have not been the best plan.
Planning
So now that we had the books read, videos watched, podcasts downloaded, and maps studied, it was time to actually make a plan. I will say, this was no easy task. It took hours, but for the most part they’re fun hours, I mean come on, we were planning for a European trip! Our game plan was to have a master notebook with a page for each day. This way we could write down where we wanted to go, when we wanted to go, and any other important information (confirmation codes, prices for museums and passes, what’s open and closed on those days, etc.)
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We planned chronologically, so we started with Paris. We decided to tag on a couple days to the beginning of our tour so we had a total of three and a half days in Paris. We first wrote down everything we wanted to do, knowing that we wouldn’t fit it all in. Then we figured out which days we couldn’t go to certain places, crossed out the outliers that weren’t close to anything else, and prioritized what was left. Our priorities were:
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Versailles
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The Louvre
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Rodin Museum
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The Orsay
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Eiffel Tower at Night
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Notre-Dame
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San Chapelle
Everything else on our list was added based on location to our main priorities. We then looked at where we would be at night and midday, and wrote down a couple different restaurant and grocery ideas so that we would have options for food. Having a looser schedule was less stressful because we knew there was always a back up plan!
Next was Beaune. We didn’t really plan much for Beaune because of the short time frame and the size of the city. All we really wrote down was wine tasting and rent bikes.
On to the Lauterbrunnen Valley. This one we wanted to get right. We are a family of hikers and this was unanimously the stop we were looking forward to the most. We picked the hikes we wanted to do and the stops we wanted to make and then figured out the transportation and we were done. Again, we picked out some restaurants and grocery stores.
Munich was not something we were too excited about. We determined that there wasn’t much in the city, besides the beer gardens, that we really needed to see, so we decided to visit Dachau. Even though it would take most of our Munich day, it was a unique experience that we needed to see. I also wanted to visit the Alte Pinakothek because it holds my all time favorite painting. We also wrote more other possibilities to fit in, time-willing.
In Venice we again picked the main things we wanted to do.
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Doge’s Palace
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St. Mark’s Basilica
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Venetian Pub Tour
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Lots of gelato
Venice is such a unique city that we wanted plenty of time to just wander around and see what we could see.
The Cinque Terre was not something I was too excited about. I love art and history and so I wanted to go to Florence, but c'est la vie. My plan was to spend the majority of the day hiking between and around the cities. By researching a little about each city I knew why I wanted to go to each. Only two of the trails were open when we went, so make sure you know what’s open before you head out.