THE PLAN

After trying to figure out an itinerary for this years vacation, which WILL include Italy even if we have to take a steamer-ship, the plans just keep changing!  And, just so I won't be caught unprepared, I also have to start thinking about GERMANY!!!!  My son and his family will move to Frankfurt next summer and will be there for two years!  At first I thought we'd fly in and out of Frankfurt and take a cheap Ryan Air/Easy Jet to London for a few days.  Then I found out you can't drive an Italian rental car into Slovenia because Slovenia, an EU/schengen member that borders Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, is considered an "Eastern European" country, whatever the hell that means!!!  So then the wheels start turning and I'm trying to figure out what we'll do this fall, and what we'll do next spring or summer.  And of course I could go to New York City (just as I could go to Florence, or even Italy as a whole) at the drop of a hat, and of course I've always had this England fixation, and that transatlantic cruise thing, and the two transatlantic cruises we did take were coming from Europe back to the states when the REAL advantage of a transatlantic cruise is going west to east, sooooo, I put them all together and came up with one incredible vacation!  Italy is not included because Italy deserves our full attention when we're there, and I want to just BE when I'm in Italy, not have to wory about the next country or the next part of our vacation.  When I'm in Italy I sort of want to feel like I'm NOT on vacation, I want to feel like I LIVE there. 

So, without further ado, here's the other vacation:  fly to NYC and spend 3, 4, maybe even 5 days in the big apple.  See a play, take a walking tour, wander around the Village......THEN....hop on the Queen Mary 2 and head across the pond to London!!!!  Stay at least 4 days, probably 5, then take the train across the English Channel!  Is this starting to sound like one of those bucket lists???  We'd continue by train to Frankfurt where we'd visit the grandgirls, maybe even do a little traveling with them to some cutesy German village where the beer spouts from fountains and sausages are waiting to be picked liked flowers. 

THEN (you didn't think I'd forgotten about Slovenia, did you?) we could rent a car and drive south, stopping once, maybe twice along the way to Slovenia where we'd spend maybe 4 days before heading back, possibly swinging wide to stop in Vienna, one of those places we've never visited but keep saying we're going to!  So how many weeks does that sound like?  Let's see, 5 days in NYC, 6 days to cross the Atlantic, 5 days in London, one day of travel to Frankfurt, 5 days in Frankfurt, 2 days travel time, okay, say 5 days in Slovenia instead of 4, just in case.  At least 3 days for Vienna, because you have to allow some travel time too, then maybe 2 more days to drive back to Frankfurt, and see the girls one last time before flying out of Frankfurt back home.  33, 34 days?  Okay, sounds good.  Now I'd better go look for more tax deductions or enter some million dollar sweepstakes.  Oh wait, a friend gave me some scratch-offs for my birthday!  Got go!

UPDATE:  the lottery tickets netted me $5 and one free ticket.  Perhaps I need to add a PayPal link to my blog for vacation donations but I'm guessing most people would rather fund their own vacations instead of ours.