- London, UK
- Paris, France
- Berlin, Germany
- Strasbourg, France
- Geneva, Switzerland
- Monaco, France
- Milan, Italy
- Florence, Italy
- Rome, Italy
In those six weeks, I will have visited more countries than the rest of my life (currently sits at 4: Australia, Hong Kong, China and Japan).
Our train pass arrived yesterday, so it has all become real now!
I'm still trying to plan our trip on a low budget, I don't know how viable that is. Julian says it's our honeymoon, so we should just go all out. It's about relaxing, celebrating our married life, and having lots of sex. So I have avoided booking us into the cheapest, dingiest hotels I can find. Still trying to keep it fairly low key though. There are some things that I had never even heard of before.
Some hotels have a pillow menu, where you can select a specific type of pillow for your room, usually for free. Anton wants to know if we can order enough pillows to make a pillow fort. One of the hotels I've booked offers the service, so I will try it out and report back. Anton says some of them also include bedtime stories for children. Again, I will see if I can get that and report back - though I think they may say not available in English or something. I wouldn't want to have someone who isn't confident in speaking English have to force themselves to read a bedtime story for my amusement, that seems cruel. Actually, asking someone to read me a bedtime story sounds pretty cruel in general, so I might skip that one. Getting a nice fluffy pillow still sounds good though.
It's also really awesome how many hotels have free wifi, at least in the lobby, if not inside the room. I am somewhat iffy about using hotel wifi, but I guess I will be as careful as I can. Hopefully we can avoid logging into Internet banking while we are away, but we will do it if we must. As a consolation, we have an account that is pretty much only for travelling, so even if it does get compromised, it's not like we will lose absolutely everything.
Just because I was curious, I took a look at some of the pricier hotels, and aside from more space, and a larger bed, the amenities don't seem all that different - except that everything is so much prettier. Oh, I guess location plays a huge part, as a lot of them are pretty much in the middle of the city centre where everything is happening. Though I got to stay at the Four Seasons for a work trip, and the bed was the most amazing bed I've ever slept in. It was so soft, like sleeping on a cloud. Though MrMan5.5 wasn't a fan, as he prefers harder beds.
Some cities seem so much more expensive than others. Monaco, Geneva and London are our most expensive so far, but I haven't really looked at any in Italy besides Milan. I thought Paris would be a bit more expensive, to be honest, but maybe it's less of a business centre than the others, and so it relies more on tourism rather than business clients?
We're going to Geneva to see the birthplace of the World Wide Web (seems like a rightly nerdy thing to do), along with the LHC, if we're allowed to visit it.
I want to go to Monaco in order to see what a real casino is like, as I've heard it claimed that the casinos in Australia are the best in the Southern Hemisphere, but if you look at the countries in the Southern Hemisphere, I think you can see that there isn't much competition out there - not that my knowledge of geography is great, but it's mostly South America, the Southern part of Africa, and I think the ratio of first world to third world countries is quite high - though I will admit to pulling that 'fact' out of my ass. We were told during training that once you have experience at one casino, it's really easy to get a job at another, but I want to see just how good the dealers at first class casinos actually are. Especially on a packed roulette table where you will probably be calculating insane payouts and will probably need to do so quite quickly. I imagine they will be the best of the best in the world (although I doubt we will be allowed into the private salons, as we have no money, so we'll be seeing the worst of the best out on the public gaming floor). Plus, a part of me wants to feel like James Bond.
The rest of the trip is mainly about food for me. I'm a bit hesitant about France, as there is a lot of food that I can't eat (though I will try it, and it's not like I have work the next day, so who cares if my eczema flares up), or I don't really like the sound of. I have told MrMan5.5 that I will try to get outside my comfort zone though, and try some things that I wouldn't normally eat. I don't know how far out of my comfort zone I will manage to go, but again, you'll find out about that later! I imagine most of my in-Europe posts will be about food. I think I will be able to blog from Europe, as most of the hotels we've booked have wifi, though I heard it's also pretty easy to get access in a cafe or in a library.
So excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Oh, I've been trying to finish my posts with something new I've learned every day - somewhat like Blind Beth from the ASoIaF series. Today I learned that Leonard Nimoy passed away. :(
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