Have you heard?! Madison and I went on a 2 week trip to Europe and we had the most amazing time! It’s was everything I could have dreamed of and more. I documented it on Instagram and so many of you had questions so I wanted to answer them here for you so you guys can refer back to it whenever you plan your next trip overseas.
It required a lot of planning planning leading up to it, but it was so worth it and now I know exactly how to plan for our future trips. Keep in mind, this is what we did and what worked best for us. Let’s get into it…
I started by drafting up a quick itinerary on my iPhone in the notes app. I did this so that I could see everything outlined and could easily make changes to it instead of having to keep rewriting it. This is what that looked like.
As I was figuring out the order to travel from region to region I had a man of Italy pulled up. I wanted to make sure I was picking places to go to that not only I had heard Madison talk about that he wanted to go to, but also make sure I was keeping the travel to as much of a direct path as I could. I knew I wanted us to start in Italy for a few reason. The most important being that since I do work for an airline, we do get to fly for free. Which is absolutely amazing! Now because of this we fly standby. I wasn’t worried about us getting there because it’s not a major tourist time and the flights were way open. I was mainly concerned with us getting back to the states. There’s only 1 flight to Atlanta and only 1 flight to New York from Rome since it’s the off season, so I knew we had a much better shot of getting home from Paris since there are multiple flights home a day.
Once I got the destinations all figured out and how many days we wanted to stay in each location I felt like I conquered the most difficult part! Now all I had to do was make the sleeping accommodations and the trip was pretty much booked. Now since Madison had never been outside of the country I knew I wanted to pick places to stay in each destination that were by a major landmark. After doing some research I decided that staying in Airbnb’s was going to work best for us for a few reasons. The first one being we could actually stay much closer to these landmarks I wanted to stay by for a lot cheaper. Secondly, we were able to alter our reservations quickly and we could see the costs laid out to us all at once and see if there was additional availability. We ended up canceling two Airbnb’s and didn’t have any fees at all and got a full refund. I’ll get into this in a second. And lastly, the check in and out times were more flexible than a hotel stay and we didn’t have to pay a few for checking in early or checking out late. There were just more pros to the Airbnb route and boy am I so glad we did this. It gave us more room to spread out in our room because we had an entire apartment to spread out in. If we would have stayed in a hotel room it would have been so crowded with all of the luggage and two humans crammed into a small hotel room.
These are the Airbnb’s we booked for our stays…
Rome
We stayed in two. This one for the majority of our stay.
And then this one for one night.
Florence
Pisa
Venice
Paris
Now if you were following along with me on Instagram you’ll know that we needed up not going to Pisa or the Amalfi coast. And when were arrived in Venice it was so foggy and cold we ended up only staying for two hours and took the all night train to Paris. We plan on going back to these places this spring or summer! We wanted to fully enjoy them.
This brings me to my next point. How did we get from place to place? We took the train system! And it was SO convenient. I 100% recommend it. You can download this app called “Trenitalia” to access all of the train information prior so you can plan accordingly. This is what the app looks like in the App Store.
This made it so easy for us to message our Airbnb host and ask to check in early or leave late if we needed to. It’s also a much more financially savvy way to travel. And honestly, you will see some of the most amazing views traveling through the countryside on these trains.
I booked a few activities for us to do while we were there before we left. But the majority of the things we did, we booked while we were over there! It was great because at dinner we could talk about what we wanted to do the next day and then we could book it. This way we didn’t miss out on anything we wanted to do while we are there.
We booked all of our activities through Airbnb except for one. The reason we didn’t book The Vatican through Airbnb is because you have to be careful with that one with any site in general. Most tickets that you see out there are for tours. Now they don’t tell you it’s a tour in the listing. We didn’t want a guided tour because we wanted to go at our own pace and didn’t want someone standing in front of the beautiful artwork talking the whole time. We wanted to take it in for ourselves. We booked the the actual Vatican site and I highly recommend booking the “skip the line ticket”. You’ll thank me later.
Back to the Airbnb experiences. Y’all, this is an AMAZING feature! I couldn’t believe how much we utilized it. It was so much easier to actually understand the experience you were signing up for because it was in English, it’s all laid out for you, and you can compare experiences all on one site. We did the most amazing cooking class in Rome. I will be talking about it forever because it was that amazing.
Here’s the link for that. https://abnb.me/p9JZpUVP43
We also did a 10 hour wine tour in Italy that was incredible! Yes, you read that right. 10 hours!! I learned so much about wine and olive oil that day and had some of the most amazing wine. The history of these beautiful old family owned vineyards is so intriguing. Here’s how you can book that!
Florence was by far our favorite and wished we could have spent more time there. Now you have to go to Rome obviously to see the history but Florence has the local feeling that makes you feel at home. I just can’t explain it. Madison and I have already decided that we will spend some time living there at some point in.
If you can go for 2-3 weeks do it! I couldn’t imagine trying to cram all of this into a short amount of time. You genuinely need this amount of time to see everything you want to see.
Shop at the street vendors! You will find the most amazing finds!
If you have free flights and will be flying standby, book through Airbnb. This way you can still have everything booked out in advanced and if you don’t get on the flight you can cancel the first day of activities and stays free of charge. If you are staying in a hotel I would wait until you are on the flight to book the room. This will save your time and heartache later. If you are worried about booking in an advanced no problem! Save the stays and experiences that you would like to do on the app by “hearting” them and then once you are inflight book everything. Don’t stress. You’ll make it there eventually.
Ask people for restaurant recommendations! Locals know best. And even people that have visited there will know some good places. Put it on your social media where you are and see what people send you. Some of our favorite places that we ate at were sent to us by my Instagram followers.
And lastly, keep your phone and wallet close by. Especially in the train stations. They are good at pick pocketing over there.
I hope this helped you guys and got you excited about planning your next trip overseas! I would love to hear about what you are booking!
Amanda Kay Hoke 