Wayne and I had our vaccinations for the big trip recently. I don’t like needles and I faint if someone even mentions taking blood from me. We were sitting in the waiting room at the Lantana Health Department (not a nice place), reading all the precautions for the vaccines they were about to inject us with – when I immediately felt like I had all the symptoms and I wasn’t going to make it through to the next day. That all went away when we starting talking to our counselor about our trip and the exciting places we were going to be traveling. We ended up with 5 injections and opted to take the Polio vaccine orally (it’s still in the refrigerator!) The only symptom I “actually” had was a sore arm for a few days.
We’ve decided that we are going to get the rail pass for Europe. We’ve been going back and forth on this issue because we thought it might be cheaper to pay as we go from everything we’ve read online. We spent the night last week adding up the cost of the “pay as we go” option and it seems to be more expensive and much more of a hassle for all the locations we plan to visit in Europe. We’ll never know what option was actually cheaper because we won’t be checking the prices. The rail passes will be ~$2000 for the both of us. It’s not cheap by any means!!
We’ve also decided we’re going to fly from England to Norway. Our time in Europe is limited and we don’t want to take the time to travel by train to Norway. Wayne and I have both spent time in western Europe and that’s not high on our list of places to visit. We will fly into Bergen or Oslo then make our way up to the fjords and then to hopefully see the Northern Lights. If we are lucky, that will be a highlight of the trip!
The initial plan was to exit Europe through Greece. With all the financial trouble they are experiencing, we looked at heading to Turkey instead. The visa will cost us an extra $120 total, but the flight to Nepal is cheaper so it’s still about the same price. I’m excited about adding Turkey to the list. We’d still like to check out Greece, but that will be a last minute decision now.
So much planning…so little time!
