If you’ve been following our unscripted, spontaneous European adventure, you’ll know it’s been a whirlwind. One of our followers asked a bunch of questions. How did we do it? I’ll do my best to answer.
First off, my wife is the queen of travel planning. She enjoys it and we’ve traveled enough together to know each other well. We are adventurous by nature. She does her best planning and then we are happy with however things turn out.
1) We are not extravagant. Hotels are a place to sleep. They were however much more expensive in Europe than we expected. We booked budget hotels close to the city center to use public transportation and/or walked to various sights.
Clean, safe and basic is our motto. We’ve averaged about $200 US or so a night which is more than we’ve ever spent sleeping. We have had to modify our travels due to aging bodies and disabilities. We walk when we can, take hop-on-hop-off buses to get the lay of the land and boat rides when they’re available. We also take tours which mostly work well and are not expensive.
2) We tried to eat one meal a day, usually lunch, at a nice restaurant. (Our Paris and Munich hotels included a great breakfast.
We looked for little grocery stores and purchased pre-made meals for dinner and fruit and granola for breakfast and snacking.
We hardly drank alcohol so that’s a big savings. Also there’s no suitcase room for souvenirs. No Olympics t-shirts were bought in Paris.
3) As to whether we just “put it all on plastic,” the answer is yes and no. We had money budgeted for a water softening system for our house. I guess soft water will have to wait. The credit card will get paid when we get home.
Next week’s blog will be from home in Bacalar. We are currently in Salzburg Austria. There are no words for how much fun we’ve had. Until next week,
DOS TORTAS
the adventures of dos tortas 
We do trip planning very much like you do it. It sounds like you’re having a wonderful adventure and it’s definitely worth it to postpone the water softener and deal with the hard, hard water of Bacalar.
Kathe Kirkbride
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div id=”AppleMailSignature” dir=”ltr”>Loose Moose
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How nice to hear from you. Hope life is good. Yes I believe we made a good decision. Dream fulfilled.
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Great advice!
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The post won’t completely load because I have crappy Internet right now. I’m on the road again, this time I chased the eclipse. And I caught it! I’ll come back to this as soon as I’m resettled in a few days.
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We could see about a third of it here. The path of the last one, October 2023 went right over our house. It was awesome. I hope you got a good show.
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Finally, I have Internet!
I can’t believe hotels cost so much. I had planned to go to Europe this summer, but it’s clear I won’t be able to afford it. But your pictures are so wonderful. They do entice me.
I think I’m going to take my going to Europe money and fly to southeastern Mexico and work my way back slowly by bus. That is currently my tentative plan for November. Bacalar is on my list of places to visit! I would probably fly into Cozumel and start my adventure from there.
I will be looking for very affordable places to stay. Anyone you know anywhere who might have a room to rent for three days to a week would be really helpful. I’m fine with staying with wonderful old Mexican ladies who just want to make a little extra money.
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Stay with us.
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!!!! Really???
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I saw your email address on a different post from a few weeks ago. May I contact you there?
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Yes
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