European Vacation Tips for Newbies
I was trying to think of a super engaging post name to blog about our trip, some other options that didn't make the cut were:
- How to not be "that" sort of tourist
- Tips to traveling when you're the Americans that can speak only one language
- Tips to staying happily married while traveling the world.
- Should you take a selfie-stick to Europe
Joking aside, Bryce and I had the most incredible 2 week trip across Europe. It was our first trip off the North American continent (if you don't count Hawaii). Some people when they travel are spontaneous and look up maybe in general where they want to go, what they want to see...etc. That, however, is not the Jensen way. Being a total type A personality, I love planning. I also wanted to insure that this trip was as perfect as it could be. It was a lot of work on the front side of things, but I was so glad I did it! I felt that I had a good lay of the land wherever we went from the research and we only ran into a few hiccups along the way.
The following are my travel tips. I will blog separately about each location we went to with specific tips for that place here soon. This post is a bit long, so here’s the list of topics that you can expect to be educated on:
- HOW TO PLAN THE PERFECT ITINERARY
- HOW TO NOT BE SWINDLED BY YOUR AIRLINE
- I <3 AIRBNB
- HOW TO PACK LIKE A PINTEREST MASTER
- PHONE DATA "HOW TO"
- PLEASE DRIVE IN EUROPE (AND OTHER TRANSPORTATION TIPS)
I tried to label them clearly so feel free to just read the parts that are of interest to you.
HOW TO PLAN THE PERFECT ITINERARY
I came across my most favorite website in the entire world while planning, and if you're planning a trip soon, I highly recommend it. It's called Sygic Travel, and it is truly the best for making itineraries. Sygic is a dream come true for planners like me. You can plan out your entire day, it organizes it as you add it so it has the most direct route. It gives estimated times to spend there and time of travel between locations. At this time you can only choose between flying, walking or driving. This works for most purposes, we did take some trains which are quicker than driving, so you have to account for that, but that’s fine. It gives quick info for a place you are visiting such as a simple description, hours, admission cost, and a link to their official website. Not all spots have it, but all the popular ones do. What I liked about it most was being able to see each day in snippets. Prior to finding Sygic I had about 10 google maps screens open so I could figure out what things fit for each day. They also have great filters so that you could search for all the ruins in Ireland, or places to eat, or historical landmarks...you get the idea. If you are planning a trip anytime soon I highly recommend it! In the end we rarely got to everything on the list, but it was great because I knew what our options were.
Here was our map itinerary for Copenhagen
Here shows the information for Amalienborg Palace. A wealth of information.
Bryce and I decided that as much as we wanted to tour and visit sites we also needed this to be a restful vacation. It’s been a busy spring, and we were ready for a slower pace. That meant not necessarily seeing every site everywhere we went, but we had a good balance of sites and rest. Not to mention, I was only 2 weeks post surgery when we started our trip so for my health and recovery it was somewhat a necessity. I found myself tiring much quicker than I thought I would, and not being able to push myself like I might normally. In addition my knee started acting up on day 2 so that forced me to go even slower. A typical daily itinerary for us was to sleep until 7 or 8 (it was pretty hard to sleep in much past that because of jet lag and time change), have a slowish, no-rush, get ready time and then grab breakfast. All while in Italy we would just find a place that sold pastries for breakfast. It was small, cheap and yummy. We usually only spent about 4-5 euros for that, and then that way we were hungry for our carb loaded yummy lunches later. And again, time change, this seemed to work with our appetites. We would tour a few places and then try to make it back to our Airbnb around 2-4pm. I would edit pictures and Bryce would watch video games, it was a good, relaxing routine. Dinner places don’t open till around 7, so we’d head out for dinner and enjoy our meal and then retire for the night after.
HOW TO NOT BE SWINDLED BY YOUR AIRLINE
I suppose before getting into even itineraries would be to book your flights. However, Sygic does have some pre-planned, specific number of day, trip itineraries that I found after the fact that could be helpful when planning your trip, not to mention countless blogs to give you ideas. We choose Italy and Ireland because those were the top 2 destinations I’ve always dreamed of. I am really not sure where we’ll go next, I hadn’t dreamed much further.
We used 2 budget airlines for our trip: Norwegian Airlines and Ryanair. Ryanair is pretty much bottom of the food-chain budget airline, but man they’re cheap. Bryce used google’s flight explorer to find out trips. You can enter your destination you are leaving from and on what day and it will give you prices to every destination that has flights to it with prices directly on the map
You can search one way or round trip, if you want multiple stops then search all your stops as one-way
They have a multi-stop option, but for some reason this didn’t work quite as well so he just searching for each stop separately. You can add the flights to your cart and checkout with them all at the end. They direct you to the airline website to complete checkout with the correct flights already in the cart. Very snappy and easy to use.
The hardest part is to get the Europe, once you are there the connecting flights are so cheap, some as low as $20-30. Of course they charge you for every single extra, but for the base, it’s remarkably low.
We ended up choosing a red-eye flight to Copenhagen, Denmark with a connecting flight to Northern Italy the next day since that was cheaper. I think red-eye flights are the way to do it, because then you just try to get as much sleep as you can on the way over and just do your day once you get there. We did allow ourselves the smallest of naps, which was unadvised, but we seemed to still be alright. In retrospect we wish we would have just flown straight to Italy as we spent a whole day in Copenhagen when we could have had an extra day in Italy. Yes the flights were cheaper but by time you pay for your lodging for the night you’re pretty much at the difference.
Norwegian Airlines
Norwegian airlines was actually surprisingly nice for a budget airline. They have a new Dreamliner aircraft that was pleasant to ride in. Their windows fade out and the lighting is meant to help with jet lag...that’s what Bryce told me anyways. I had been warned very thoroughly about the strictness of Ryanair (coming later), but I didn’t hear anything about Norwegian, but they were in some ways worse. Their baggage requirements are that your carry-on AND personal item must both collectively weigh 10kg. I have never heard of an airline weighing your personal item (ie. backpack). We knew when we left the apartment that we were a little over, but thought we’d risk it. As we were approaching the line we could see people weighing their bags and if it was overweight they would take a bunch of stuff out of their bags and just carry it, or put on more layers of clothes and then reweigh and they were fine with that (which in all reality makes zero sense...it’s all going on the plane anyways!). When it was our turn the lady said that our sets of bags were both 2kg over, but that she’d let us by this time. Everything else with Norwegian was just fine. We didn’t pay the extra for assigned seats when we booked our flights, but got adjacent seats upon assignment of our boarding passes when we checked in for both flights.
Our flight back with Norwegian we totally splurged and paid for the premium seats (their version of first class). Oh how glorious it was to recline and have a leg rest and get food and such good service, but mainly the leg rest was my favorite. We took a day flight back with arrival into Boston at 7pm local time (12am Ireland time). This worked out well since it was a long day and we were definitely ready to get back to sleep, a relatively easy adjustment to the time change.
Ryanair
Ryanair. Each person I told that we were using Ryanair actually cringed and warned me to make sure I looked into all their requirements ahead of time because, and I quote, “they are the worst.” Our Airbnb host from Ireland filled us in a bit and said that they used to be much worse, but have had to relax a bit in recent years as their strictness was driving away too much business. We were told the baggage requirements (size and weight) were strictly enforced, but no one ever even weighed or checked our bags on either flight. They do say that if you don’t print your boarding pass off they will charge you $75 extra at the time of baggage check. In addition, I was told that if they run out of carry on space that you would have to pay to check your bag (that last part didn’t seem to be true). Because of those things though we decided to pay for early check in. With this you can check in up to 30 days before your flight. Boarding passes printed, seats chosen and ready to go. We also decided to go ahead and pay the extra few dollars and get priority check-in to board early to make sure our bags got on board, again this didn’t in the end seem entirely necessary. But hey, we got to sit on the plane longer than anyone else. Ryanair is not comfortable. Their seats are hard, the chairs don’t recline that glorious 1 inch we all so eagerly wait for and they play adds over the speaker throughout the flight. That being, our flights were short, so you didn’t have to endure it for very long. Last thing, everyone also said to make sure that you get your boarding pass stamped with the visa check stamp that verifies a valid passport. I was told if you did not have this then they would not let you board the plane. This needs to be done at the baggage check area, even if you are only taking on carry-on items. We did this for our first flight from Denmark to Italy, but then on our second flight, from Italy to Ireland there was the longest line and they said if you didn’t have checked bags to go to the gate, I did clarify that I didn’t have a stamp and they said go on ahead. It seemed to be fine for that flight - but would still recommend getting the stamp. Would hate to miss your flight because of it!
I <3 AIRBNB
Now, when planning your European vacation you can choose lodging many ways. We choose Airbnb for all our spots and except for 1 place they were all wonderful. For those of my Idaho friends that don’t know what that is, let me explain it to you. Airbnb is essentially private owners posting their residences for short term rentals. The prices are per day, though some have longer minimums. These are cool because they offer the chance to live like a local and stay in some neat places that a hotel wouldn’t likely offer. They are also usually cheaper. Our goal was to stick to around $100/night for all our places (and we did stick pretty close to this). For our 2 weeks we stayed in 8 different places! You can choose from either single room or entire residence. All of ours were the entire units to ourselves.
I had started to look and save some places on the Airbnb website back in January when I first started planning the trip and there were some really neat places. I didn’t have the time to really nail down all the itineraries at that point and I figured they would still be around...wrong. A bunch of the really cute places were already booked up (like staying in castles!), which was a bummer, so if you were to be on the ball and plan one thing really early, this would be it. I tried to plan out my itinerary roughly so I knew how many days we wanted to spend in each place so I could reserve our rooms. If you do end up trying out Airbnb it would be awesome if you would use my referral code by clicking here so I can get $20 dollars towards my next stay!
I had one friend who when traveling to Ireland didn’t reserve any places before going. There are so many traditional B&B’s that they just stopped each night in a town and found a place. You could look ahead of time to see if this would be an option for you, depending on how spontaneous you like being. This planner could never handle that though. I’ll post about the places we stayed a bit later when I get into each place we visited.
HOW TO PACK LIKE A PINTEREST MASTER
We decided to travel with only carry-on luggage for this trip, and given what we had heard of Ryanair’s very strict baggage policies we bought some very tiny Ryanair approved carry-on’s. They definitely aren't quality that will last forever, but they will last for several trips.
If we were to check bags for all our flights it would have been quite a bit more expensive. Plus, I have had several friends recently travel abroad and lose their luggage, so I decided less stuff, but actually having it, was better. An addition we knew we’d have several occasions to walk a mile or so with our baggage. Having light bags made all the difference pulling them on all those cobbled stone streets and tiny sidewalks.
I scoured Pinterest like a crazy lady trying to find the perfect combination for a capsule wardrobe to take with me. Which is a minimal number of pieces but can be mixed and matched together. In theory this was a great idea, except I didn’t take into consideration the sweat factor. In Italy it was in the upper 60’s to low 70’s, but walking around in the sun still makes you sweat. And once we got to Rome in was almost 90. The Rome outfits were completely not suitable to be re-worn. I knew that our Airbnb in Florence and 1 in Ireland had a washer so I had been planning around this and we really did make it work. But laundry in Europe was completely exasperating. In Florence this washer was in Italian and had so many knobs and buttons I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. We tried to google translate all the words and then decided Eco40 sounded like a good setting, be done in 40 minutes, right? Wrong. Eco 40 washes your clothes at 40 degrees for 3 hours as if it was washing it at 90 degrees. But once you start the load the door locks there isn’t anything you can do about it. And then once it finally DID finish we thought our clothes were still locked because the handle is actually a latch, even though we thought we were just breaking the door. Electricity is expensive in Europes so no dryers either. We did just barely make it to Ireland for our second load, but that washer, even though it was in English, was just as confusing! And they did say they had a dryer, but it didn’t dry. And it was cold and damp so I wasn’t sure how we were to get them dry, thankfully they did have a wood burning stove, so we hung them near that and they dried pretty quickly. In retrospect I wish I would have asked the owners for step by step directions when they were showing us the places. Actually, scratch that, I wish I would have just payed someone else to do it.
Other than that, I did like my outfits, and felt satisfied with my pieces, and was so glad to have packed so lightly.
For outlet converters we opted for these:
I know they have a bunch of universal ones but I had heard about recessed outlets that wouldn’t work them since the universal are a little larger, so we just decided to buy the 1 pack for Italy and 1 pack for Ireland. They also come with 3 each so that is way better, 1 for each phone and the laptop...or curling iron...or whatever you need it for. I also didn’t look into Copenhagen well enough and they had a whole different plug in so we just had almost dead devices the next day since we couldn’t charge them Thank goodness for my external power bank that got us through.
Also ensure that all your devices will work with Europe's 220 voltage. The US uses 110, and while most devices are capable of both, you need to check. If you look at the plug-in you can see in fine print (110-240v), if it says that you’re all set.
Most modern phone and computer charges are dual voltage already. Sadly, my curling iron wasn’t, and I’m so vain I felt compelled to buy another so I could curl my hair. If you google search voltage step down converters you’ll quickly see why I didn’t just get a voltage converter (expensive and gigantuous). The curling iron I bought came with an insulated storage bag that you could place the iron in while it was hot, which was such a great bonus. We left most of our places pretty early so I could just curl my hair and throw it in the bag without worrying about letting it cool.
PHONE DATA "HOW TO"
I’m not sure what we did before phones, google maps and data service, so naturally we didn’t feel we could live without it in Europe either. I had heard quite a few people recommending just getting sim cards. I saw several booths for these right off the plane or train, but we didn’t feel this would be the best for us since we were going to be in 3 different countries. Well turns out that our T-mobile plan actually already came with free unlimited international data (in select countries) and unlimited texting. It was 2G service, which is slow if you want to just browse Facebook, but for maps and loading information for your destinations it was just fine. I called customer service ahead of time just to be extra sure this was going to be free or else they charge you $15/MB used, and it was so helpful. Not only did he look up all the information but also told me that once I got to each country I would need to dial #766# to connect to their towers. He also gave me their toll free number to the New England branch in the event I had any difficulties while I was away. We didn’t have any issues, and cross our fingers no extras pop up on our bill this month.
So moral of the story, make sure international service isn’t already included in your plan before buying something extra or upgrading your plan!
PLEASE DRIVE IN EUROPE (AND OTHER TRANSPORTATION TIPS)
Last section here in the Traveling Europe for Newbies is ground transportation. Europe knows how to do public transit like nobody’s business. So if you feel like you can handle it, it’s so worth it. It’s usually only around $2-5 for any of the transit systems where as a taxi will cost you $20-30+. Google maps is a great resource for finding and using public transit. It will also give you a link to the local website at the bottom of the description so you can find out how to pay, whether that be with exact coins, with your phone, or buying a ticket before riding. It’s fairly easy to navigate. Also, they have pretty decent fares for the passenger trains as well. We did this several times and it’s a very comfortable way to travel. Of course if you have to (or want to) take a taxi, they are pretty easy to come by too. Italy has designated taxi stands that you will have to find, but there are a lot so you should be able to find one pretty close to you wherever you are.
We also rented a car, in both Italy and Ireland. In Italy they require you to have a International Drivers Permit (which you can apply for here) to rent a car. It’s basically just the Italian translation of your US license. It does take a few weeks to get back, so make sure you plan ahead. There are plenty of blogs that will tell you to NOT drive in Italy, I would strongly suggest you do. We rented our car from Florence and drove to Rome. You can see my following blogs for the amazing adventures we had. It was my most favorite part and I can’t imagine what Italy would have been like without seeing it. It was fairly easy driving. We had a car with a GPS which was so convenient. Normally I end up being the navigator but some roads are just too confusing to explain. So either that or bring a phone stand or window mount for your driver to see the navigation. There are many places in the major cities where you cannot drive without being ticketed (Called ZTL). You can search google ahead of time for these just to have a general idea, but they area is also clearly marked with the ZTL sign like the one below.
In Ireland they drive on the other side of the car and other side of the road, so that’s an adjustment, but Bryce did great and said he adjusted pretty quickly, so don’t let that deter you!
More to come later about the rest of our Europe trip with tips from Bryce and Ashley!
