So if you had told me a year ago or even this past summer or even at the beginning of October last year that one random Friday night at the end of October we would decide to go to Europe on a random whim, I would have called you crazy. Sure enough, one random Friday night Mia was at my parents having a sleepover and Pat & I were watching Rick Steves (one of my favorite episodes Salzburg & The Lake District) dreaming about the one day we would get our turn to go to Europe. So as we were watching this episode it got me looking at airfare to that area and I noticed that if we went in March 2017 (my birthday month) it was actually pretty reasonable like under $1000 for two of us round trip! So then I decide to look at air miles to see if maybe it was possible for us to swing 2 round trip tickets that way and sure enough between Pat and I’s air miles we had enough to cover it! As I made it official I think Pat thought I had half lost it and was half on something (even though I was dead sober). I remember him saying “wait we are really going to Europe THIS coming March?”
That’s right I’m beyond excited that in mid-March my husband and I will be traveling to Munich, Venice, Florence & Salzburg! It’s been almost 10 years since my last time I traveled internationally and that trip was quite an epic one to South Africa and almost 3 months long. This one will still be pretty amazing but won’t be as long only about 11 days which is still enough to go and see 4 amazing cities. Pat and I are pretty big into Rick Steves and always dreamt of going to Europe but after we got married we had a hard decision to make either buy a house OR go to Europe. Well, we did the grownup thing and bought our house…. I know I know so logical! Here are 5 years later after making the decision to hold off on Europe we are finally getting to go.
We are spending 2 nights in each city and taking two night trains to maximize our time in each place. So here is where I would love some help from people that have traveled to Munich, Venice, Florence & Salzburg. We have our lodging but I would love some recommendations on great restaurants & attractions that are worth going to and places to avoid aka tourist traps. I know on our short list of places we do want to do is; one of the beer houses in Munich (I know totally tourist but it’s something we always wanted to do), Garden walk in Munich, Glass Island in Venice, The David in Florence and for Pat the Ferrari Museum outside Florence. I have been holding off on doing research because I don’t think I will sleep much with excitement once I do….
And any traveling tips would be much appreciated too! I already bought packing cubes and a travel surge protector w/ USB plugins so we can charge all our devices off one plugin. Or do people actually use money belts that they keep under their clothing? Which lens should I take for my camera? But any other tips or tricks you have for traveling in Europe via trains would be helpful on our end!
If you want to follow along on our trip feel free to follow me via Instagram and/or Snapchat I will be doing both apps while we are traveling so feel free to check out our travels as we do our Epic Europe Trip of 2017!
My Snapchat code, just take a photo of this code while in Snapchat and it will automatically add my profile on to your list!
Late comment but I hope it helps! So funny, we bought our tickets back in November for March for the exact same reason. We found roundtrip tickets out of Seattle for $1000 roundtrip to Frankfurt, what a steal! We couldn’t pass it up. I’m sure you’ve already read this – the most common places people encounter pickpockets is at the train stations because people are packed so closely together and aren’t paying attention to their bags. Italy is definitely the country on your itinerary to be most concerned about pickpockets too. Just keep your bags close and in sight and you should be good though! Just to be safe we’re wearing money belts on our trip that has all of our bank/emergency numbers, extra cash, back up cash and credit cards etc. while keeping money for each day in our purse/pocket. It’s generally cheaper to obtain euros from the atm once you get to your destination instead of exchanging dollars before you leave or at an exchange counter. Having a credit card with no foreign transaction fees is great because then you only have to pay the 1% visa fee and no other fees. The Leo.de free app is also a really great translator app for Germany! I hope you have fun!!