We started planning for The Big Trip in the fall of 2017 just after Zhaoyang received her US Citizenship. Previous thoughts of traveling were always met with groans regarding how difficult or impossible it is for a Chinese citizen to get a Visa. So now, with a US passport in hand, the world was at our feet!
At first we were planning to do a Round-The-World trip in January 2019 after Zhaoyang graduated but after thinking about it a lot, we decided that it might be too stressful to be traveling and having to worry about Zhaoyang returning to look for a job. So we settled on a trip before she graduates in the summer of 2018. As fate had it, Zhaoyang was offered a job that is scheduled to start in January 2019! So it worked out perfectly!
Originally we were going to for 90 days but after changing our trip to the summer we decided that 60 days would be better. And also, with only 60 days, we decided to focus solely on Europe. I had some unused AA miles and we looked for flights that would work and, due to limited choices, ended up with a flight to Helsinki in June and a return flight from Madrid in August. So with our trip bookended, we were now ready to start filling in the countries in the middle.
One of the side objectives for me on this trip is to retrace the path of my father from his trip to Europe in 1949-50. He had travelled with friends through Austria and France and also had made a trip to Cornwall with his sister Joyce. My dad had made a small diary of his trip, sent various postcards, and took many pictures. With that information I was able to recreate the paths of his journey and I settled on incorporating trips to Cornwall, Austria and some cities north of Paris.
With our starting and end points determined we settled on the following countries:
Finland, England, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy and Spain.
Now the fun began, making transportation, hotel and event reservations!