Italy, Part 2 - Preparations

Italy trip - preparations, continue....

Now that we've set up a date, and shared the document, it's time to plan what to do in Italy and when.

The plan is to have a tour and a day of no activity in each city. First full day in a city should be a tour day. Hopefully, that would give us  a little better feel for the city for the next day, which is a day just to walk around, relax and hangout. There needs to be a time to try gelato in every city. Of course, we have to go for a wine tour in Florence. After all, Florence is in Cianti region, Tuscany.  And in Rome, I am allocating a day for Vatican.

So, here is the plan:

• Venice:
• day 1 - arrival
• day 2 - city tour
• day 3 - off
• day 4 - drive to Florence
• Florence
• day 1 - arrival
• day 2 - city tour
• day 3 - wine tour with truffle based lunch
• day 4 - off
• day 5 - drive to Room thru Pisa
• Rome
• day 1 - arrival
• day 2 - city tour
• day 3 - Vatican tour
• day 4 - off
• day 5 - off
• day 6 - fly home

Now, that we know which tours we want, it should be easy to arrange it. But there is a glitch :) We need all tours with Russian speaking tour guides. My cousin does not speak English and we don't speak German. The only common language is Russian.  Natan found Russian speaking tour guides in each city and I found a wine tour guide around Florence that speaks Russian, English, and German!!! The glitch is no longer a glitch!

Next topic: money. obviously I'd like to have some euros when we land in Italy. Also, I don't want to exchange the money in the airport. So, I talked to my friendly banker in the local Chase bank. They've exchange dollars to euros with no fees. The exchange rate I got was 1.35. It's probably better rate then what I can get at airport or exchange. If I remember, I'll try to keep an eye on the exchange rates in Italy.

Last thing as far as I can tell: power. Most of the devices now can work in dual mode (120/220V). The problem is that there are too many devices: camera, phone, etc. Lana also wanted to take her straightener. That device works only in 120V.  After doing some research I did find a straightener that had dual mode, and it wasn't that expensive. Also, I found the universal power strip with USB ports. So, we should not have any problem with power in Europe. If someone is going abroad in future, you can borrow these things.

I think we are all set and ready to go. Can't wait!

Italy, Part 1 - planning

We finally decided to go to Italy!!! Step 1, check! BTW, this decision has been reached in April of this year.

First question: which cities?  This decision ended up being one of the easiest. Other then the usual goals (vacation away from home, Europe, culture, things we read and heard about, paintings, sculptures, food, wine, etc), we also wanted to visit the cities and places that we (actually I) and our parents visited when we were in Italy on the way to US in Jan of 1980. That means we would stay in Venice, Florence and Rome. The rest of the places, like Pizza, are short drive from these cities.

Next issue: local transportation, how do we get between cities? Again, got an easy solution. In one of my conversations with my cousin, Natan, who lives in Germany, I've mentioned our plans and he told me that he has never been in Italy and would love to join us there. It works out great, since 1) I have not seen him in a while.  2) we would have a company, somebody to spend time with. And 3) we have a way to get between cities because he would drive to Italy and we can all drive together when we are there. Second issue is resolved!

The decision about the dates came easy since we did not want to go before High Holidays. So, I started looking for the best airfare.  There are quite a few travel agencies and agents. The problem is that one never knows when is the good time to buy tickets (nobody wants to overpay). Since I started looking for the tickets early enough I figured I have enough time.  There is a lot of advice on this topic on the internet.  All the articles seem to agree that for the international travel, the best time to buy ticket would be around 3 months prior the trip. Also, there are couple of interesting sites that given the flight information can keep track of the prices and email if the price changes as well as historical data on the price. The site I was using was "yapta.com". Then I found out that Google can search for airfare as well. Google is actually better because I don't have to specify exact flight information, just departure airport, where I am going and what day. Google will generate list of available flights around that time.  You can save the search and check it out any time (On yapta, I had to be very specific about which flight I want to monitor). Google rules!!!! At around 3 months before our trip, I booked the flight tickets. Chicago->Philadelphia->Venice and back is Rome->Philadelphia->Chicago. We arrive in Venice at around 9:00 am and back in Chicago at around 7:30 pm. I think it's perfect timing. Since the tickets are not refundable, the trip is on!!!

Just to keep track of things and make sure I don't forget anything, I've created a spreadsheet on Google docs (did I mention that Google rules?) and shared it with Lana and Natan.  Strongly recommend doing when planning trips. The issue at hand is that Natan does not speak English. He speaks Russian and German. Google spreadsheet has a translate function. So, I made a translation of all the important information. Now we can truly share the info!!! I don't want to keep saying "Google rules", but, Google rules! If anybody want to know more about Google docs (or other Google services) let me know. I used to work for Motorola, which is a Google company, at least for the next few months.

Stand by for more planning of our Italian trip!