August 9, 2012
Not much progress to report on the trip planning since the last update. We have actually been busy selling our home and moving into a temporary location, pending our relocation to South Carolina next November/December. Now that all of the moving is over, it is time to start back on making the final additions to the overall trip plan. We still have one more car rental to book for the portion of the trip from Nuremberg to the Frankfurt Airport, and that will complete all of the pre-trip reservations.
It was interesting and hopeful, to see the Euro drop in price as compared to the dollar, it was below $1.20 for a couple of days before starting its climb back upward. From a purely cost perspective, we had hoped it would continue to decline, although that was only showing overall economic weakness in Europe, and not good for the global economy. It would have been nice for our trip economy, but it is not that much higher, and a couple of cents one way or the other does not make a difference as compared to the total cost. I think it is more beneficial to the mind.
We continue to monitor the flights for small changes to the schedule, which has already occurred twice, and for any possibility of obtaining better seats. However, most of the better seats are premium seats, and are not worth the increase in cost. We are more looking out for any cancellations that might free up better seats, but that happens less these days with all of the fare change costs.
We will begin to formulate more firm plans for each of the stops, or maybe just review the plans we have already made, but need to refresh in our minds, now foggy from all of our moving efforts.
We have all but decided not to try and go with carry on luggage only, there is too much space needed for camera gear and the camera tripod. However, we are going to try and set a self imposed weight limitation of 35 pounds, less than the 50 pounds the airline imposes. In the end, I will be happy if we end up less than 40 pounds since we have the the weight of the empty suitcases to take into consideration, which is probably around 9.5 pounds.
August 31, 2012
Well, August has slipped by and we are now only 13 days out before we depart on our flight to Paris on September 13, 2012. A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks, mainly in our personal lives. My retirement has been processed, all of the paperwork is completed, and the countdown for that to occur is now set into motion. I will officially retire on Friday, September 28, the day we are in transit between Schwangau, Germany and Oberammergau, Germany. Luckily, they are close together, about 45 km., so we should not have any problem finding some time to celebrate my retirement once we arrive in Oberammergau.
With everything going on, it has still been tough to find the time to actually start back with our trip planning, but in the last couple of days, we have been able to start filling in some of the smaller missing pieces. Next week, I will send off emails to all of the hotels to verify our reservations. I did this on the last trip just to make sure and have piece of mind. Nothing would be worse than to arrive somewhere and have a mishap with the reservation. It will also give us the opportunity to get any hotel specific information on the directions, and parking requirements for those hotels where we will have our rental car.
We have definitely figured out the complex Swiss Rail Pass system, and have concluded that the current 2 for 1 special the Swiss Rail Company, SBB, is running for the Fall is a good deal financially. Without the 2 for 1 price break, I doubt we would actually purchase the passes, but it will end up saving us some money and allowing much more flexibility than we get with the less cost pre-purchase of online, non-refundable individual trip super saver fares. There was some investigation required to confirm that we can actually purchase these 2 for 1 passes in Switzerland. One travel company on the internet is promoting that they must be purchased prior to arriving in Switzerland, but that is not true. We will still purchase them in conjunction with our arrival from Paris in the border town of Basel. With the passes, we will have 4 days of free travel on the trains, and on other local travel methods (Buses and Metro’s in larger cities), and get discounts on many cable cars in Zermatt. We also get the half-fare cost for the Golden Round Trip to Mount Pilatus, explained in an earlier post. We will be purchasing what is called the Swiss Flexi Pass, which gives us the the 4 days of free travel, but within a one month’s window. This allows us to have some flexibility in between travel days, which is not the case with the normal 4 day Swiss Pass, which is for 4 consecutive days. Since we are in Switzerland for 6 days, we need the card to last until the last day of travel from Zermatt to Strasbourg, France. We will get free travel for the portion of the trip from Zermatt to Basel (same border town as the initial trip from Paris) and then just pay the supplemental fare for the portion of the trip in France, from the French side of the station in Basel to Strasbourg. We also began investigating sights to visit in Strasbourg, so that portion of the trip planning is also starting to shape up.
Since we are less than two weeks out, we began to monitor the weather at some of the places we are visiting. While investigating some of the Swiss pass discounts through the internet, we found a great website for weather in Switzerland. This site just happened to come up during a search on information about Mount Pilatus. It was a little shocking to see that it was already cold (0 degrees C) there and snow showers. Although we had previously looked up historical weather on all of the dates for areas we are visiting, we may have to re-evaluate the level of cold weather clothing we were planning to take based on that little weather surprise.
Here is a link to this site that gives the Switzerland Weather for the larger cities.
As things just seem to go with these trips, one moment the trip seems far off, and then all of a sudden it is right around the corner, and there is still a lot to do to get ready.