All that planning
Before the travel plan
It was December 2020 when Reet first said that a “gap year” is something she wanted to do and that she has already listened to several podcasts about it. Why, though?
Reet had been sitting at home, alone, taking care of the baby while I was at work and corona didn’t make it easy to adjust or be more “social”. So, instead of raising the child next to a beach somewhere warm, it was winter in Estonia (which by itself is limiting) during corona time.
There was an unfortunate event in Reet’s family, which resulted in some money for Reet and the idea more accessible for us.
In Estonia the government pays one parent their salary for 1,5 years to stay at home with the child (but you can stay home for3 years total, just the rest without the pay), so that could help financially even more. And we could sell stuff… like TV, Car, anything of value.
The idea was so good that I even went and told at my company that this will happen at one point in time (at the beginning of next summer and for a year).
But those plans changed, instead of plans for travel, we decided that, instead, let’s make our home better, let’s buy a new one, keep the old one for rent - make a safer future for us money wise.
That plan went to the toilet as well, because the reality is – we want too much (we do not settle for an old one) at the time everyone wants too much (prices for houses were too high, like almost twice the budget that we had). Did search for 5 or so months, though, hoping for a salary increase or a miracle of a house coming to the market that’s inside our budget. Neither of those things happened.
In the end we were even thinking about selling the current house, and then buying the new one. That idea we both hated. This we could do this at any time even without the extra money we have.
The trigger for a travel plan
So, then in the beginning of June or late May (who remembers this)… a friend of Reet’s came to visit. The one who has seen the world more than we would ever and asked: why still not travel, though? you’ll never regret it! Thank you, Janika!
As my career wasn’t going anywhere, what better time to take off some time and concentrate on the family for a while instead of giving a better part of the day to work that in the end hadn’t brought enough reward. Maybe by the end of it i’m going to be able to balance work-personal life better.
Reet, had a different experience. She was already at home and the company couldn’t support her more with the idea and experience we had in mind with the family.
The travel plan
This is what we knew in the beginning:
Budget ~6k a Month, which is like double the budget other families have travelled with (that Reet listened to) if we’d travel for 7 months (depending on how much we actually spend we can stay a month longer or a month less.
Where we wanted to go?
Dario (Me): Iceland, New Zealand, Eastern Canada
Reet (the better half): Costa Rica, Hawaii, New Zealand
Saskia (Child nr 1, a 11-year-old): Disneyland Paris
Emmi (Child nr 2, a 1-year-old): Don’t really know what to expect
We have cruised before, so I wanted to have a cruise over Atlantic Ocean as well (I’m thinking - better for Emmi, if she doesn’t have to be in a 12h long flight).
Where we can actually go?:
Cruise – Wrote to our travel agency. Their response: Wait before you buy, because of corona, things can change at any moment and because of our budget, we could go only with either costa or MSC (neither are good in our opinion, though we haven’t cruised with Costa) and it’s difficult to get our money back from them if plans do change.
USA (inc. Hawaii), Canada, New Zealand… Basically almost anything outside Europe is either completely blocked or difficult to get to.
Decision: Let’s just wait and see what the rest of the world does and see Europe then.
Okay, Europe it is:
Iceland – out of our budget.
Transport? Currently in Europe, renting a car - super expensive.
Decision: Dario will drive to Germany.
Where would we want to go in mainland Europe?
Dario: No-where… okay, maybe Alps
Reet: Tuscany
Saskia: Disneyland Paris
Emmi: Mämmämm
Sounds like a plan! A month of planning to go, just need to check some nice cheap places to stay at and we’re golden for a few months.
Then Saskia got an opportunity to go to a swimming camp in Spain (near Gibraltar) in late October
Decision: let’s do that instead of Paris (which was totally in the wrong direction anyway)
New plan:
Dario will drive to Munich, Germany. Reet and the kids to follow a few days later.
Problem: No suitable flights to Munich (too early for Emmi, Reet says).
New plan:
Dario will drive to Zürich, Switzerland. Reet to follow a few days later.
Okay… Zürich is too expensive. Okay… The whole Switzerland is too expensive
That’s okay… we can handle two nights, let’s make it up later, taking a cheaper accommodation.
We’ll move on to Lake Como from there.
Then to Tuscany and then slowly to southern Spain… Awesome plan.
Okay. Reality check:
Emmi can’t handle, in Reet’s opinion, drives longer than 5 hours (and that’s like the absolute maximum).
Reet believes that we should stay everywhere for at least 2 weeks.
We have 8 weeks and a minimum of 29h to drive from Zurich to our final Europe’s known destination (Saskia’s camp), if we’d stay near highways, which we won’t. Simple math says that it’s about 7,25 hours per drive minimum.
Jumping ahead a little bit: Currently we’re driving about 3-4h from one location to the other and staying for max a week in one place (and probably that won’t be enough).
Then a small final tweak… extend Switzerland to 5 nights (Thank You again Janika) instead of 2 and let’s skip Tuscany, because it’s too much off our path… and after lake Como, let’s just go somewhere.
And that’s the plan we went with. We’re currently near Lake Como, Italy and moving to the next place tomorrow.
Additional thoughts:
We are vaccinated (except of course the children); thus Europe is easy for us to navigate during Corona time and the future writings will confirm that (until they don’t?)
The very first plan was to drive to Europe with Saskia. Also, in the end I didn’t go alone, but with my friend, who agreed to come with and, thus I was able to see Austria for a few days before the girls arrived in Zürich, but that’s a separate topic.
We really don’t have a plan. We have a general idea of some parts of Europe from Instagram and sites for tourists, but not nearly enough to make proper decisions about our stays.
Let’s take Lake Como as an example… Why… why come to a place that’s full of tourists – more expensive, crowded… if we don’t do water sports (and we don’t) or don’t rent a villa and don’t like Italian old towns with the smallest roads ever.
We also booked our accommodation near Lake Como 1 day before coming to Lake Como, because… Expensive and were waiting for a miracle that never came
Switzerland would have been cool anywhere I think, though. The lakes, the mountains.
Next place will be a random place in the middle of fields of grapes. Probably boring (I already checked how far from that are the mountains :D), but that’s something we need. I think it’s not healthy to have a 7-month-long vacation without any downtime (and I haven’t had the level of “boringness” until Today to write this for the 2 weeks we have been here) and that I found because Emmi’s fifth tooth came in the night, so I was up early.
The budget for Reet’s wishes and needs (and let’s be honest I don’t mind as well) is too low. The accommodation she likes is more expensive that initially planned (not just in Switzerland, but everywhere) and turns out, that if you’re vacationing, you’d actually want to go out to eat and drink more than when staying at home. And we really don’t know how people have done this with their families for half the budget or less… They must be starving and living in studio apartments (or tents?) and hitchhiking or they don’t look for stays from Airbnb or Booking.com (and yes, we know that if you choose monthly stays the stays will be cheaper, but… not… by… that.. much)
Yes, we will drive to Europe by car, but how can we get it back home? It was on the last day before my drive-off, when I was out smoking Shisha with friends and one of them said that he would be willing to drive back (it was ~2000 km’s to Switzerland from home, will be a lot more for him from Spain).
The apartment we have at home… We were able to find someone who would be willing to live there for only 6 months, only 1 week before I left home, and it luckily covers the loan payments. We of course put the advert out with a “reasonable” rate only 2 weeks before :D.
Also, then the cleaning… putting all the stuff away, that was all for Reet to deal with and enjoy while I was driving around in Europe.
But packing for the trip was easy, because our own Car, more room than expected and by now I already know also the clothes I never wear, so can send those back home (or throw away).
We know that Costa Rica is open and might be that in November we’ll go there and stay there for the rest of our vacation, because the rest of the world is closed.
So that’s our failsafe - if everything else fails, then Costa Rica.
