Europe 2010

Finally, back by popular demand (well, demand by a few people), the travel blog! We are departing for another trip to the UK and Europe on September 16, and I'll once again be chronicling our adventures here.

Since this trip will be even more fast-paced than the last one, and we are taking only a tiny netbook computer along, my posts are likely to be significantly shorter this time around. However, they should still be fairly frequent and will definitely include food photos!

A detailed itinerary is below but here's a general overview. I'll be in Europe for two and a half months total; David will join me for about half of that time. He wasn't quite up for the long trip that I was this time, which I understand! Amsterdam is our airport hub as usual, since it's the only European city with a direct flight from Portland (and it has an excellent airport). We'll fly over together on September 16; David returns home on October 28; and I return home on December 4.

We'll spend the first night in Leiden, a nice Dutch town that is only about 20 minutes by train from the Amsterdam airport. The next night will be in Brussels, then we'll have a long travel day: train from Brussels to Calais (3.5 hours), ferry from Calais to Dover (1.5 hours), rent a car in Dover, and drive to Canterbury (half hour). We've reserved a special rental car that we're pretty excited about! No, it's not an Aston Martin. Sadly.

We'll drive around Britain for about a month, making a big vertical loop: up the east coast all the way to the northern Scottish islands, then back down along the west side. Lots of cathedrals, rural churches, museums, abbey ruins, and prehistoric stone circles along the way. Our last stop will be London, where we leave the rental car.

In London, among many other things, we're hoping to see one of our proudest published photos: a view of Oxford printed extra-large as part of a temporary exhibition that has been displayed on the Tower Bridge all summer. The website says the exhibition runs "through the autumn," which is rather vague, but hopefully it will still be up in early October.

Then we get on another ferry back to France, pick up another rental car, and make a loop around Normandy that ends in Paris on October 22. We'll probably part ways after Paris (sniff!): David will go back to Amsterdam to fly home, and I'll go east to see a bunch of Gothic cathedrals, then south to Switzerland.

After Switzerland I'll spend a few nights in northern Italy before arriving in Bologna on November 5, where my friend Sarah will join me for the last month! We'll visit Pisa, Rome, Florence, Venice and Verona, then head north through Austria and Germany back to Amsterdam, where we fly home together on December 4. Good times.

Here's a basic map of the entire route. It's interactive: click and drag on it to move around, and use the + and - buttons on the left to zoom in and out.


View Europe 2010 Overview in a larger map

And here's the detailed itinerary, which may change a little but is generally pretty fixed. The dates indicate where we will spend the night. It's a mighty ambitious itinerary, and does make me pretty tired just thinking about it, but I think it will be good for business and a whole lot of fun too.

9/16 Flight to Amsterdam 9/17 Leiden 9/18 Brussels 9/19 Canterbury 9/20 Cambridge 9/21 Cambridge 9/22 Lincoln 9/23 Beverley 9/24 Durham 9/25 Abbeys 9/26 Edinburgh 9/27 Edinburgh 9/28 Edinburgh 9/29 Inverness 9/30 Orkney 10/1 Orkney 10/2 Isle of Lewis 10/3 Isle of Lewis 10/4 Isle of Skye 10/5 Oban 10/6 Oban 10/7 Liverpool 10/8 Hereford 10/9 Hereford 10/10 Oxford 10/11 London 10/12 London 10/13 London 10/14 London 10/15 Rouen 10/16 Caen 10/17 Mont St Michel 10/18 Le Mans 10/19 Le Mans 10/20 Nevers 10/21 Chartres 10/22 Paris 10/23 Paris 10/24 Paris 10/25 Paris

10/26 Laon (David departs for Amsterdam) 10/27 Reims 10/28 Troyes (David flies home) 10/29 Dijon? 10/30 Geneva 10/31 Zurich 11/1 Zurich 11/2 Pavia 11/3 Cremona 11/4 Parma 11/5 Bologna (Sarah arrives) 11/6 Bologna 11/7 Pisa 11/8 Orvieto 11/9 Rome 11/10 Rome 11/11 Rome 11/12 Rome 11/13 Rome 11/14 Florence 11/15 Florence 11/16 Venice 11/17 Venice 11/18 Venice 11/19 Venice 11/20 Verona 11/21 Verona 11/22 Salzburg 11/23 Augsburg 11/24 Augsburg 11/25 Strasbourg 11/26 Strasbourg 11/27 Speyer/Worms 11/28 Trier 11/29 Cologne 11/30 Cologne 12/1 Utrecht 12/2 Amsterdam 12/3 Amsterdam 12/4 Home

In the two years since our last major trip, I've learned a lot about what photos I need and how to take better photos, mainly by spending countless hours editing the ones from our 2008 trip (still not done!). And seeing some of our photos published during that time has been really fun and motivates us to try to do even better.

So this time around, we are both determined to behave a bit more like professional travel photographers, which mainly means more effort and more planning: doing most of our photography in the best light even if it's not convenient (morning and evening, not midday), lots of advance research (sunrise/sunset times, best places for city views, opening hours, which direction buildings face, asking for special access), using the tripod a lot more, and lugging around much heavier camera equipment!

Another major goal of this trip is to pack radically lighter, since we'll be carrying the extra camera gear and traveling by train more this time around. It's also nice to do carry-on luggage only on the plane. We are actually pretty optimistic about our ability to do this - we have planned out our bags and it looks good. (The Kindle is a big help in this regard - on past trips a lot of my luggage weight was books!) I'll post pictures when we're all packed!

Right now we're both very excited about the trip but also a little overwhelmed by all the preparations that remain to be done before we leave! Only a week and a half to go - EEK!