It's Booked!

I just clicked the "Submit" button and there is NO turning back now! I have officially booked our next European trip! It has been almost 6 years since the last one and there is no time like the present! We were going to use our savings to move out of state, but that didn't happen. Then we were going to use it for infertility treatments, but now we are waiting till next summer for that.....so I figured we should go somewhere big while we can.

Nick and I agreed we wanted our next Europe trip to be a combo including England/Ireland/Scotland, and we were planning on using GoAheadTours again (which we used for a guided Italy tour in 2008). I started there and looked up prices for next summer....they were WAY higher than I wanted to spend on a trip like this. Then I stopped--they speak English there! Why can't we just go on our own? So then I started looking into solo travel and found a FABULOUS travel site that bundles any combo of cities into a nice little package and you pay one price for everything.

I started out by plugging in the same 3 cities as with the tour company just for comparison sake--London, Edinburgh and Dublin, 2 nights at each. It was almost HALF the price. I was floored. And elated! This trip was looking even better! As I browsed the website I saw another package including those cities plus one more--PARIS for only $100 more. WHAT???? Yes please. Obviously that is the package we chose :)

The best part is we are not going alone--no, my dad is not going with us again--Nick's best friend is going with us!! He has never been out of the states so this is the perfect opportunity for him to get his feet wet (plus he's part Irish). Every time we go on trips we always wish we had some buddies that would travel with us, but none of our friends have ever shown an interest in joining anything we do. It will be great to have someone to rehash memories with when we get back!

I was able to tweak our flights there and back so we fly straight from Chicago each way, and it will only take 10 hours to get there! First stop is Dublin, Ireland for 2 nights......

...then we fly to Edinburgh, Scotland for 2 nights.....

....then we fly to London, England for 2 nights.....

 

....then we take the Eurostar train to Paris, France for 2 nights!

 

 We fly out from Paris in the afternoon and (thanks to the time changes) get home that same evening. We are all very excited and have lots of excursions planned along the way! We have already started watching some travel shows for these areas to get ideas for things we want to see. Our for-sures include Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower.

In other news...I called our RE and booked our IVF start for next August! Yay for us.