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! You can read more about the planning in this post.
The Big Trip also partly came about after a bet I made with Zhaoyang regarding her grades when she returned to college after 20 years to pursue a degree in Accounting. I had told her I would take her to France if she got all A’s again after she did that in her first quarter at community college. Well, she kept getting straight A’s, 44 of them, including through three years at San Jose State University, and so I ended up owing her 44 cities. Zhaoyang blogged about it in this post.
The Big Trip contributed 23 cities to my “debt”, here is where we visited, sorted by date of visit:
| Place Visited | Dates | Slept there? | |
| 1 | Helsinki, Finland | June 13-16 | Yes |
| 2 | Plymouth, England (Cornwall) | June 16-18 | Yes |
| 4 | Swindon, England | June 18-19 | Yes |
| 5 | London, England | June 19-26 | Yes |
| 6 | Paris, France | June 26- July 3 | Yes |
| 7 | Laon, France | June 28 | No |
| 8 | Soissons, France | June 28 | No |
| 9 | Peronne, France | June 28 | No |
| 10 | Amiens, France | June 28 | No |
| 11 | Beauvais, France | June 28 | No |
| 12 | Brussels, Belgium | July 3 | No |
| 13 | Ghent, Belgium | July 3-7 | Yes |
| 14 | Bruges, Belgium | July 4 | No |
| 15 | Amsterdam, Netherlands | July 7-11 | Yes |
| 16 | Marken, Netherlands | July 8 | No |
| 17 | Volendam, Netherlands | July 8 | No |
| 18 | Monnickendam, Netherlands | July 8 | No |
| 19 | Berlin, Germany | July 11-18 | Yes |
| 20 | Prague, Czech | July 18-21 | Yes |
| 21 | Vienna, Austria | July 21-24 | Yes |
| 22 | Salzburg, Austria | July 24-29 | Yes |
| 23 | Innsbruck, Austria | July 25 | No |
| 24 | Munich, Germany | July 29 | No |
| 25 | Verona, Italy | July 29 – Aug 2 | Yes |
| 26 | Venice, Italy | July 31 | No |
| 27 | Rome, Italy | Aug 2 – Aug 6 | Yes |
| 28 | Naples, Italy | Aug 6 | No |
| 29 | Amalfi Coast, Italy | Aug 6-10 | Yes |
| 30 | Pompei, Italy | Aug 10 | No |
| 31 | Madrid, Spain | Aug 10-14 | Yes |
You’ll notice that there are 31 cities in the list. The cities in red I agreed to not count because we didn’t explore the city, we were just passing through 😂😂. So now, after these 23 cities, I have 19 more to go!
Also on The Big Trip I have attempted to recreate some of the photos of places my father visited in 1949. You will see references to those places throughout the blogs. When my father was 25, he took a year long trip to Europe where he met and eventually married my mother. He had travelled through Austria, Switzerland, France, England, Scotland and the Netherlands. I decided to try to meld these trips together using the pictures, stories, postcards and a small diary that he kept. Where possible, we’ll link the places that we visit together with the information I have from his trip. So in a sense, this is ADR’s blog too! You can read about my father in his own words here.
We hope you’ll enjoy reading the blog from The Big Trip!