Day One: Driving to San Francisco

Everything is packed. Two girls have managed to squeeze five weeks of clothes and toiletries into one suitcase. Might be the first
of many miracles that happened on this trip. This trip is actually happening. In my life, I usually dream up big things, big adventures, wild plans, but never do they actually happen.    

About two years ago, as 30 was suddenly not so distant, and my health was becoming increasingly poorer, I had an “its now or never moment”. Still single, with limited responsibilities, and a love for Europe I began to plan a once in a lifetime trip, leaving no desired spot off the itinerary and giving myself no time or budget restraints. I still remember the day that I began to plan the adventure. One afternoon while I was visiting home in California, my mom and I watched another unrealistic but wonderfully romantic comedy, “Letters to Juliet.” The story and characters left me feeling happy and hopeful, but most of all the setting of the film sparked my wanderlust. I want to go to Italy, I told my mom, but that was just the beginning. I started to assemble a list of all the places that I’ve ever wanted to see in Europe and in a short time I had a trip of a lifetime mapped out.

It took me a little over two years to plan and save for the trip (and it still wasn’t enough once we got over there).  As I said before when I began planning I left nothing off the wish list of places and things I wanted to see. Then I started cutting. First constraint that was put on the budget and itinerary was time. My sister, Jennifer, was traveling with me and she could take six weeks off from her work in Australia. Part of the six weeks would include spending some time in California with my family. So I had to squeeze all our dream European destinations into 5 weeks. My original wish list included places in France; such as Paris (although I’d already been there I wanted Jen to see it) and the south of France like Nice. But to save on time and money the middle countries were cut and soon I had a rough idea of where we would go.

The next years of planning included watching every travel show on our destinations, reading what seemed like every travel book on Europe and searching for every bit of information I could find on the Internet. I also created a detailed budget in Excel. Each day had a section of the budget, and each day was split into categories such as transportation, hotel, and excursions.  I also used excel to make a detailed itinerary calendar that I color-coded for type of travel (i.e some places we were driving, some flying and some we took the train). The calendar changed several times in the course of two years, but it made it easy to see the whole five weeks in one glance. I also spent a lot of time using Google maps; mapping out all of our driving down to the smallest detail. I sometimes think the planning part was just as fun as the going.

We left early Friday morning for San Francisco. My parents drove us the five hours from our hometown to San Francisco because it’s a million dollars cheaper. We were staying the night in the Bay Area and then flying out in the morning. I had been on this drive more times than I can remember but this time as we crossed over the red golden gate bridge I realized that two years of planning and saving and dreaming were actually happening. I would have several more moments of realization as we began our journey. Each time I would be in awe and almost disbelief that it was actually happening.

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