Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Great Britain - our first truly international international trip


This is our first truly international trip. Yes, we have gone to Brazil a few times, but Brazil is my homeland, so I can't consider Brazil to be international, even though we are traveling abroad and we need passports and Dean needs a visa and stuff.

I am very nervous about this trip. We will be in a foreign country, where they use a different kind of money and think and live differently than we do. So I am trying to be very careful about planning. And I know we might not be able to fully enjoy all the benefits of  this trip, because everything is so foreign to us. Yet, I am doing my best.

We might get there and find out we will not be able to do everything we planned. I am really afraid that we get there and realize we will need much more money that we already have. Actually we already will need more money that we have. That's why our tax returns will be going towards the vacation fund.

Yes, we have a vacation fund, freak, how do you think we can actually afford the trip!!!!!

But what I am really afraid of is that when we get there this trip will turn out to have much more hidden costs than what I predicted.

Here's a picture of what our trip chart looks like so far.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Great Britain's First Buys


Two weeks ago I made our first Great Britain trip purchases.

Expedia.com - 2 plane tickets + a hotel in London (downtown London mind you!!!) = U$2,357.00.

VisitBritain.com - 2   4-day Great British Heritage Pass = U$139.00. (This pass will save us lots of money on free entrance to attractions all over Great Britain, including some - wow! - castles in Scotland - especially the Edimburgh Castle. Oh, and by the way the British people say Edimburgh really funny. They say Edimbra. LOL. Gotta love that British accent!)

LondonPass.com - 2  2-day London Pass = U$ 184.00. (This pass will save us lots of money on free entrance on attractions in London. That includes the Windsor Castle and the Westminster Abbey!!!)

There's more to buy. We are going to Ireland for a weekend. We need tickets from Liverpool to Dublin. The Ryanair website has awesome sales, like a round trip Liverpool-Dublin-Liverpool for about L$25 a person. I need to wait for the sales to buy at that good price, so I am watching the website everyday. Once we get the tickets I can start looking for hotels and car rentals.

Of course we still need money for a couple of attractions that don't take passes, such as the Buckingham Castle (London), the Mersey Ferry trip (Liverpool), The Beatles Museum (Liverpool), and the Blarney Stone (Ireland). We were going to go visit Paul McCartney and John Lennon's childhood homes, but we figured it was not worth the money. If you're a Beatles fan trying to visit Liverpool, think about that. Is it worth paying 20 pounds a person to walk into Paul's and John's old homes? I think people really exploit the Beatlemania thing. Really. I can walk by it and take a picture. I don't have to get in and listen to someone tell me how Paul used to make scrambled eggs in this kitchen or John used to think about him mom Julia in this bedroom. But I will make it to the Carvern (which also costs money), and will go to Strawberry Fields and to Penny Lane!

We might go visit a malt distillery if we have the time. And money.

Life Trips Plan

Since I love to plan, I made sure that I planned out all the trips Dean and I want to take during our lives. I have planned a time for everything, including babies. Obviously this is just a plan. The future belongs to God.
In this plan I also have a packing list so I don't forget anything, and one major item on that list is Birth Control - that, my friend, is the only thing under my control that will make sure everything happens when it is meant to happen.
I edit this file often because plans get changed again and again - you know life happens.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Agls09NQFoR_dFlEdVZJX0xSUTRaWjl2Nm1QVWNWWkE