Trips I'm Planning: 11 Days in Austria & Croatia

A few months ago, I got the amazing news that my dear friend Sis is engaged! It's been a while since I've gotten to spend time with her (almost 5 years since our time in London, to be exact), so I am really looking forward to visiting her in Austria and being present for her special day.

St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna

Hubby and I have been wanting to explore a few different parts of Europe, and he's never been to Austria, so at first I thought we'd explore Austria some more, or take a train to Prague for a few days, or check out Budapest or some cities in Germany. But he's had a hankering to see Croatia, and Sis has been on a couple of incredible sailing trips there, so we figured - why not check another country off our bucket list! 

Ticket price puzzle: Part 2

On August 4, I checked ticket prices for the dates of June 15 - July 1 as a test to see what prices might be like for the dates we'll be in Europe next year. It's been six weeks, so let's see what's happened to ticket prices.

Old prices, as of 8/4/10:
- LAX-Rome, Vienna-LAX: $1466.88
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1332.52
- LAX-Rome, Stockholm-LAX: $1432.00

New prices, as of 9/21/10:
- LAX-Rome, Vienna-LAX: $1406.64
- LAX-Rome, Dublin-LAX: $1331.62
- LAX-Rome, Stockholm-LAX: $1331.62
- LAX-Rome, Venice-LAX: $1418.51

I added the LAX-Rome-Venice-LAX option in there because a couple people who will be traveling with us are most likely going to go home from Venice instead of doing the second leg of the trip. I'm pretty shocked at how much that ticket is coming in at right now! Crazy!

I'm also a little surprised at the rest of the results. Vienna came down $60, but Dublin only came down $0.90!?!? What's that about? And, Stockholm came down the most with a drop of almost $101, but Stockholm is pretty much out of the picture at this point. In fact, we've basically decided on Dublin.

I tested the dates for May, which is farther away from our actual dates, and the prices for the Dublin route came in at roughly $1100. Maybe this means the prices will come down next month?

This is not cool, airlines! I need ticket prices to come down some more over the next month (we'd like to book our tickets Oct/early Nov), because if they stay this high, it's really going to blow my proposed budget out of the water!

Already revised.

Our itinerary for next year's Europe trip is already shifting and evolving.

The Italy dates are still pretty solid - we'll be traveling there for a wedding after all, and a bunch of us will be on that part. But the rest is all sorts of up in the air!

We had previously planned to go to Vienna after Italy. But then we started thinking - we could go anywhere, really! We could go to Stockholm and see Candy K's Swedes. We could go to Vienna as previously planned and see my friend Wolfi for the first time in a while. We could make a trek over to Scotland and see the highlands. Or we could go back to Ireland and see more of the North West coast we loved so much last year.

We have a little bit of time to play around and daydream, and it's been so fun to do so. Obviously, we need to figure out where we're flying in and out of before we book, but the possibilities are endless!

If you were (or are) going on this trip with us, where would you go after Italy??

Group travel is... tough?

Planning a trip with a group can be tough. There are so many things to consider - people's tastes, what people want to do and see, where to stay, where to eat. It's exponentially easier when you have a group of friends like mine - we're all pretty flexible, and we're not against the idea of "subgroups" going and doing their own thing for a while. We're low key people, and I have a feeling it's going to make planning our trip to Italy next year for our friends' wedding a fun process rather than a tedious one.

The one thing to keep in mind is the constant changing of plans - take, for example, the itinerary. Granted, the itinerary I posted for the trip was SUPER rough, but it's only three days later and things are already changing. When I did that itinerary, I was thinking that the majority of people would want to do their own thing after being in Florence. I knew one friend wanted to visit the people she worked for in the Alps, and thought it might be fun to detour there. But I forgot that about half the people going have never been to Italy, and that for them, Venice might be more important than the Alps. So I took the two days assigned to the Alps, and put them in Florence and in Venice instead. That way, my one friend can still go visit her people, but others have more opportunity to explore the areas they're interested in. I also made a split on one day - some people want to stay in Rome a day longer while some want to go up to Siena with the bride and groom.

Italy 2011 - A tentative itinerary.

So I just found out that one of my bestest friends in the world is going to get married next year in Siena, Italy! I am SO stoked, and less than 24 hours after finding out, I'm already planning my itinerary.

Wanna see what I'm thinking? I thought you might!

The wedding is in late June, on a Monday. The bride and groom are planning on going to Rome for a few days before the wedding, and having people who want to meet up there so that we can all caravan to Siena. So this itinerary is based on that - and the fact that BF and I want to make a great trip of this and go for a solid 2 - 2.5 weeks.

Flying out on a Wednesday night, and arriving in Rome on a Thursday. We're thinking of flying into Rome and flying out of Vienna.