Grazing Rites

Since June of 2005 I have had “review European hotels on tripadvisor.ca” on my To Do list and I have finally gotten around to doing it.

Now given that it’s been 2 years (wow, has it really been that long?) since the trip I had to call up the old itinerary file from that trip to get the names and methods of booking of the relevant hotels. I also whipped out some of my photos from the trip, most notably from the Flic Flac because it was charming and the Hotel Galles because it needed it’s failings exposed to the world.

Going over the itinerary I am again reminded of how much effort Craig put in to planning that trip. My mommy bankrolled the trip but he was the one who, through his labour, made it take shape. He used expedia quite a bit which I am just, 2 years later, beginning to see the utility of. I have to admit in some of the early planning stages I had some reservations about letting him do all the planning - it’s not that I doubted his abilities but rather I was concerned my mom’s interests and requests would fall by the wayside.

At first it certainly looked that way, starting out she made 2 requests. All she wanted to do was see the Tower of Pisa and the Crown Jewels of England - and with a wee bit of digging she wanted to take a gondola ride in Venice. Since she was backing the trip it seemed reasonable to include these 3 reasonably humble activities but the initial plan included none of them. Now this was when the 3 of them were all living together in a house - a social experiment with potentially disastrous consequences if you ask me.

Meanwhile I was working my butt off at a month-long Halloween event that was still in it’s infancy and requiring a fair amount of my attention so my research and planning time was limited in the extreme. The original plan called for stops in Frankfurt, Prague, Vienna, Salsburg, Rome, Milan, and Montpelier. I did some research and put together a presentation in favour of adding Berlin, Venice, Paris, and London.

Now admittedly my additions were perhaps a bit more mainstream tourist dessert to Sis and Craig’s meat-and-potatoes stops but mom wasn’t overly concerned with the cultural significance of castles and such. However Craig did such a great job selecting interesting locations and doing his best to make them come alive for us that by the end we all had cultivated a grateful appreciation.

Now I freely admit I was very interested in visiting the 4 cities I had added but I was emboldened to fight in favour of Venice and London because by rights those stops should have been the impetus behind the trip. Craig’s superior planning skills even found a way to stopover in Pisa. In retrospect I don’t think it was so much a matter of her wishes being ignored but rather she likely wasn’t being very vocal about her wishes and naturally her and my requested stops were the most expensive.

So Venice and London, while also VERY high on my list were largely battles fought for my mom. Paris I also fought for because I was certain mom wanted to see the Eiffel Tower even if I couldn’t get her to admit it at the time. It’s one of those things you have to do at least once in your life and this was her best chance. Berlin on the other hand, that was all me. It had cultural, historical, and political relevance and was a pretty party town - I don’t think much of that interested my mom but that doesn’t mean she didn’t enjoy that addition to the trip.

But here I was, armchair travel planner, laying out requests and suggestions but it was Craig who had to find a way to make it work and stay on budget. And he did it very well. We stayed at 4 star hotels for the most part and he found some phenomenal apartments - well, more so Prague than Rome but nevertheless I don’t think I could pull off such a feat today.

I boast about my travel planning, preparedness, and deal-finding but my little side trips to Edmonton and Las Vegas are nothing compared to the complexity Craig had to wrap his head around planning that trip. And we were not particularly easy people to please either. I think to a limited extent we all felt we had some ownership over the experience although in truth had my mom just come down and made all the decisions she would have been well within her right to do so.

But in the end it all worked out. Sure there were issues but those were issues of personality not planning. The planning was complicated, thoughtful, detailed, and went off almost completely without a hitch. Looking back it’s an experience I wouldn’t mind repeating, with some modifications of course. I can’t help but wonder what kind of a trip I could come up with given what I know now. Unfortunately the budget just doesn’t exist at present.

This entry was posted on June 26, 2007 at 10:37 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.