Where to Sleep?

So, next step in the planning was to start finding accommodation, which proved a bit trickier than I thought. 

My first instinct was to look for camping grounds that had little cabins, but it soon became obvious that any of these types of parts were quite a way out of the big towns, and we would spend a lot of our time travelling in to and out of the city each day.

Cheap hotels could have been an option, but as a party of 4 it isn't always easy finding rooms to fit us all comfortably.  And the price of the room and the cost of eating out every meal would add major $$$ to our budget.

So I have been investigating the Homelidays web site, which is basically a page for people who wish to rent out their properties on a short or long term basis.  There are accommodations available in pretty much every European city, so I was able to find something in every one of our stops.

In most cases we will be staying in a 1-bedroom apartment, with our own self-contained kitchen and a washing machine, meaning we can cook for ourselves and do some laundry when we need to.  Very convenient!

So far we have confirmed bookings in Rome, Florence, Venice, Prague and Munich.  Since we are only stopping for 2 nights in Vienna we have decided to stay in a hotel room there - a little bit of luxury, and a chance for me to escape cooking, even if only for a brief time :)

We are not sure what to do about Paris at the moment.  We have requested an exchange through our timeshare, but are unsure whether we will get one or not, as it is obviously a very popular place in summer.  We managed it when we were on honeymoon nearly 12 years ago, but don't know if we will be that lucky this time around.  I have some feelers out for apartments in Paris just in case.

London is the big question mark at the moment.  David has relatives in the UK, but I don't want to impose the 4 of us on them all!  We will be spending a lot of our 2 weeks in London catching up with everyone, but I'm not sure if any will be keen on having all of us camped in their living room :)

The Planning Starts!

Now that we know what events we have tickets for at the Olympics, we have started planning our itinerary.

At this stage, we plan to go fly into Rome, then continue on to Florence, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Munich, and Paris, before heading to London.  A stopover is planned for Dubai on the way home.  All up, we should be away for about 7 weeks.

The hardest bit has been getting the girls to be excited about the fact that they will get 6 weeks off school - not happy, Jan.  I have never known kids who are upset about missing school .... never happened to me growing up!  Still, we have assured them that they can still do stuff on the way around Europe, like maintaining this blog and keeping their own journal.  Perhaps their Year 5 teacher next year will want them to do some "real" work too :)

Airfares can't be booked until 11 months before the return leg, so we have to wait until later this month before we can book.  Hopefully there will be some good deals around for "early bird" specials! 

Getting tickets to the Olympics

The first step in our dream trip was to get some tickets to Olympic events.  We looked at the schedule, decided which sports we'd like to see, looked at where they would be held, and found out who the ticket seller would be for Australia.  So, we had a plan.

In April, we submitted our ticket request.  We wanted to see Athletics (specifically high jump and shot put), Equestrian (dressage), Synchronised Swimming (teams free routine), and Diving (10m mens).  Given the number of events we wanted to see, and the number of us going, we went for the cheapest seats.

Well, after the ballot had been conducted by the ticket seller, we ended up with 0 tickets .... that's right - none, zero, zilch.

After picking ourselves up from the disappointing news, we decided we were still going, even if we had to just see the free events like the Marathon and the Triathlon.  However, we still had a chance of tickets, as there was to be a pre-sale time period for those who had missed out in the first ballot.

Thankfully, I was online right at the allotted time, and managed to secure tickets to Synchronised Swimming (Duets) and Handball.  I was a bit concerned (and so were the kids) that the handball would be somewhat lame and boring, but when we looked at a YouTube clip of action from an international handball game, we realised that we could be in for a treat.

So now we have tickets purchased, and the planning begins!

Why are we doing this?

When the 2008 Olympic Games were on, Morgan and Casey were enthralled by the different sports being shown on TV, and the number of people that were at all of the events.  They loved it all, from the Opening Ceremony through to the more obscure sports like synchronised swimming and badminton.

They asked if we could take them to the Olympic Games one day, and I said, "sure, of course we can".  Well, when we looked at the host cities for the next few Olympics, it became clear that London would be the most logical place for us to go, as we have family there, and its proximity to Europe would mean we could do a longer trip and see lots of great places.

So, the dream was set, and we talked about it periodically, but never really did a lot about it.  Until .....