A travel vacation--A vacation FROM travel

Last year I was a travelling maniac. I went to Vegas (twice I think), San Francisco, Denver, New York, the Bahamas, and then to Berlin and Prague. I ended the year travelled out thinking I didn't want to take another vacation for a year. Which would be interesting considering I already had a Caribbean cruise booked for my cousin-in-law's fortieth birthday.

Other than that, I wanted to stay home. Nest. Spend my last year with my oldest son at home. And yet....

Yesterday I found myself looking up plane tickets. To Spain. I have a free round trip ticket to Europe and I'm torturing myself because I cannot and will not book another ticket until after I graduate from school in May. Then I can plan an awesome trip without stress. One I can make sure is paid for and doesn't have to compete for payments against my tuition. Although it might compete against my son's.

Well no tickets except for the trip to Vegas we scheduled. But that was for DH. I'm just along for the ride. And the free Love tickets :)

Text from my son

It was so weird, I saw prague and the river we stayed next to in a video in government class.

This is why I travel. It put life and living into context. And this is why I will take all my kids out of the country before I send them off to college.

And to put it in to context for you. Here is the River.

Rome----Ciao Bambino makes me long for it

Craig has often says he wants to return to Italy but to get a house for a week. Travelling to Tuscany however as easy as I had imagined. You must choose to fly in to Rome or Milan and even then it's a 3 hour drive (granted a gorgeous drive I'm sure) I've been thinking about how if I fly into Rome I wouldn't be able to just pass though because HELLO It's ROME!

I love the article from the NY times 36 hours in Rome, which gives me ideas of what to do in our short layover should we crash in Rome the night before our plane leaves.

New site found- WITH CONTEST! via context travel

How many times can I say I love Context Travel? Through my facebook account I noticed a contest going on at CiaoBambino! Want a 2011 Tuscan Vacation? Ok who was the knucklehead who said no? HOW CAN YOU NOT? Oh Italia I miss you so!!!

Craig and I were watching Quantum of Solace just last night and I moaned about wanting to go back to Italy. I tell you this passport is burning a hole in my pocket! Well go...sign up!

or maybe don't that way I have more of a chance to win ;)

I get knocked down (but I get up again)...

In July my husband's boss told him to change his flight so he would leave the office earlier and hit Vegas in time for dinner. We had originally been booked to arrive around 8pm and wouldn't have made the dinner with the company. I obliged by and contacted Southwest Vacations who changed our times and refunded us $30. Dancing and fun ensued.

EXCEPT that I didn't pay attention to the fact that the person had ALSO changed the return time so that we didn't get in at 4pm as original instead we get in at 12:20 AM the next day. Ugh. While the thought of more time to play and have fun in Vegas initially sounds awesome, the thought of storing or toting our luggage around for an extra 8 hours did not.

Enter the front desk at Monte Carlo. I called to find out what check out time officially was and how I would be able to check out late. Turns out for an extra $50 we can stay in the room until 6 pm. This gives us time to have fun, have lunch TAKE A NAP and then head to the airport. I'm diggin this. The lady made a note in our filed reservations that we would pay cash when we got there so here is hoping it all turns out ok, because right now Craig is a bit miffed. And I will be big time miffed if I have to cart around a cranky 37 year old!

Updates on if it all works out to be posted as soon as we return.

A Berlin Sunset

One Evening I looked out our hotel window in Berlin to this incredible technicolor view. These are all original colors no touch ups at all.





HAPPY LABOR DAY WEEKEND!!

Park Inn Hotel Prague

It's a chain. While many people love chains because it means stability, I am not a big fan of the sterility and sameness of them. However, I was unsure about the quality of hotels in Prague so I went with a chain called Park Inn. This was a few blocks off the beaten path of tourists which mean an extra stop or two on trams, but also meant seeing the university students each day going to class, and school children playing in the park with their moms and puppies. As the purpose of this trip was to show my son how America is the same and yet different from other cultures, I felt this type of location was necessary.

I had posted about the 1800 hotels disaster (of which I am now part of their Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings) and how I called the hotel to get reservations with no hitch.

Hmmm. Should have expected more problems. Because when we showed up on August 10, we were told the reservations were for OCTOBER 8! Didn't I say this would happen???? STUPID STUPID MONTH/DAY, DAY/MONTH problems.

Luckily the gracious people at Park Inn noted that I had already had the correct reservations, so not only did they accept the reservations, they also let us have the room at the pre-paid amount from the original 1800 hotel transaction. AND they didn't make us pre-pay. We were able to apply all our leftover Koruna to the balance.





To save energy most hotels in Europe require a key card (or really any card...Stuart left his student ID in there so we dind't have to have a key card in there all the time)



Typical half open European shower:



The view outside our hotel window...the roof top garden of the building next door. This was a beautiful escape to the urban sprawl.