Europe Post 1: Planning The Trip

     As I mentioned in my last post, Lars and I took a bug Europe/China trip after we graduated from MSU. Since I wasn't actively blogging at that time, I decided the best way to cover and talk about our trip would be to break it down into a few posts. To start off, I figured I would talk about where we decided to travel.

When planning out our trip, we decided to pick out a few key places we wanted to visit and then plan our trip in the most logical way we could to make it from one place to the next. At the top of our list of places to go was Germany - where Lars was born and used to live.

Of course visiting the entire country would be a massive vacation in itself, so we picked out just a few places to go to on our trip. At the top of the list was Saarland, the area where his Aunt and cousins currently reside. 

It's a bit more of a remote area and not the most touristy, but is absolutely beautiful! We were able to split our time there between visiting family and taking quick day trips to other areas nearby (Heidelberg, Luxembourg..). It was the perfect way to start the trip and get acclimated to the time change! Germany-wise, we also added Cologne to our must-see places in as his parents used to live there and Lars was born in the city!

To balance out the hustle and bustle of cities (Lars particularly prefers the laid-back, natural beauty) we booked a bed&breakfast in the French Alps. Thank goodness we did that because it ended up being our favorite place we visited! More on that in a later post, though..

Moving out of Germany, the romantic in me put Paris as a must-see place. We also added one night in Switzerland (only one night because $$$$), a few days in Amsterdam, and then booked a flight to Shanghai, China! His parents and younger brother actually moved to Shanghai the other year and are staying through this upcoming summer. It turns out adding that flight didn't change our ticket prices what-so-ever, so other than the jet-lag there was no downside to flying over there to see them!

       

Next post I'll talk about our flight (we had quite the experience with our rental car!) as well as our first week in Germany. Can't wait to reminisce on all of our fun experiences!