Planning a Trip

Patrica over at Allons-y and I got together a few nights ago to start planning. We met at 5:30, ate baked potatoes, then realized soon that our phones wouldn't get us enough info at the speed we wanted it, so we relocated to Hastings with our laptops.

Our tiny table at Hastings was covered by paper and computers. On my screen, I believe I am looking at a Metro sign. I was trying to figure out how to get from Paris to Manchester, I think.

Originally, we were going to go to Highclere Castle on the first day of the mini break and then hightail it to Paris that afternoon. That Saturday, we were going to rush to Manchester to see Alex Kingston in Macbeth.
We then realized, we would have more time in Paris if we went on a weekend. So we are! Now we will actually be able to see most everything I wanted to see, including Versailles! We'll also add something I forgot about, but Patricia reminded me about: The Moulin Rouge. Now, we won't see a show there because it's crazy expensive, but a picture outside is on the to-do list.

We decided that during the mini break, instead of just hanging in the dorms while everyone else travels, we will go to Cardiff. We were going to go over a weekend, but decided we might as well just do it during the break. See the Doctor Who Experience, the Cardiff Castle, and whatever else there is.

Manchester apparently has a china town that's really big. But other than that, it looks really boring. Since there is nothing to do there, it means sleeping in instead of waking up early to rush somewhere!

We also decided that we were going to try and go to Brighton. I don't really know why, other than it has a cool pier. It's just a day trip though, so no hotels to worry about.

We're also going to take a Doctor Who Walking Tour of London. The Cardiff tours don't run while we'll be there.

A Paris planning sheet

The top has walking times between several of the sights I want to see as well as openings and closings. Always go to the place that opens earliest as soon as it opens. Best travel tip I know. I tried then to make a loose schedule for the two days, but it really depends on where our hotel ends up being. The side is the costs of everything in Euros and then in dollars. It's a little higher than it should be because everything had a "concession" option that included under 25s. I thought that meant food, so I didn't use that price until I was looking today. Whoops. You can see tons of mark outs because I took the Louvre off of the list and added Musee D'Orsay. The lines are shorter and I like Van Gogh more than DaVinci.



The hardest part of all this planning is finding hotels. All the cheap ones are nearly full and I don't think we want to book this early in advance in case we change our minds. Plus, cheap in Paris doesn't necessarily mean cheap in America, so that is a problem too. I think I've have narrowed the hotel list down though, so I'll show my parents and see what they say. Hopefully by the time this actually posts, the hotel is picked.

We spend nearly four hours planning this. We were going to play my new Doctor Who card game I won on a Twitter contest, but we were too busy planning. It was sad.

My Doctor Who 'war' card game! I'm excited to play this in London!!

Now all we have left to do is decide what to see in London. I made my lists. It includes Buckingham Palace, The Science Museum, The History Museum, Westminster Abbey, and The London Zoo. I also want to fit in at least two plays.

Busy busy busy!

So, we met again LAST night to finalize Paris hotel details. I had found a hotel that I LOVED and I was ready to book, but Patricia convinced me to keep looking. I did, but I didn't really 'look.' I was going to say "I never found any. Let's just stay here at this one that I love."

Well, I found one that was better. My eyes skimmed across a list of hotels and I saw an American chain hotel name. I then saw that one of my old teachers had stayed there. After texting her and getting a recommendation, I looked further to see that it had FREE breakfast! Most you have to pay €10 to get breakfast added and this was FREE. Plus it has free wifi.

Needless to say, we booked there.