European Vacation - The Conclusions

Back to a relatively normal existence again, though an existence plagued with jetlag.  I thought we would all be fine.  We arrived home at 8 PM Saturday night, and were asleep by 10 PM.  This was a perfect setup to completely skip jet lag.  Our son was the first to break rank by waking at midnight and refusing to sleep again until 2 AM.  Sunday, we went to bed at 10 PM (after celebrating my birthday) and I was up for good at 1:30 AM.  On Monday, we made it a family affair when our son woke us up at 11:30 PM, my daughter woke at midnight, and we decided to watch Shrek until we fell asleep again.

Hopefully, jetlag is done now.  So, my first conclusion:  you cannot avoid jetlag.

Here are the rest:

In Europe, everything is closed on Sundays.  We visited four very Catholic nations.  Everything was closed on Sundays, except those business that catered to tourists.  Restaurants, transportation, hotels were open - shopping centers and stores were not.  In France, this is by law.  In the other nations, this is by custom.

Landscape is the same everywhere, only the architecture changes.  The meadows of France look like the Midwest.  Austria remind me of Colorado.  Spain was like Southern California and Italy looks like Napa Valley.  Nature has Her patterns and she repeats them all over the globe.  The only thing that changes is how man interacts with Her.

Everyone smokes.  Smokers were difficult to avoid in Europe.  In Austria, the smoking section is right when you walk in the door!  There were a lot of non-smoking hotels, restaurants, etc, but they all had ashtrays directly in front of their entrance.

Skype rocks!  I had a few incidents in Italy that required me to phone my banks in the US.  Without Skype, that would have meant using an international phone card.  With Skype, I called the 800 number with no charge to me.  Can't be technology like that!

Disney likes money.  They charged exorbitant prices for everything.  It was the only hotel on our trip that charged for internet.  They charged per minute for local phone calls.  To launder clothes at the hotel was $11 for a shirt.  Unbelievable.

Facebook is everywhere.  Every time we would walk by a public computer in the airport, the hotel lobby, or on a laptop in a restaurant, the person was on Facebook.  Didn't matter which country we were in or how old the person is.  It is no surprise that Facebook is the largest nation in the world, by population.

More people means more work.  Bringing extra people on vacation means more work, no matter who they are.  It's more people to consider when selecting activities.  More people to keep track of.  More luggage to carry.  Sometimes, like in Spain, it also means multiple taxis to go anywhere.

Transportation is expensive.  Even if you eliminate the airline tickets, we spent more on transportation than on any other single expense on the trip.  More than on hotels, more than on food.  Our one day trip to Rome cost more in transportation than the hotel did for the entire four days.  When I planned vacations in the past, I accounted for transportation to and from, food, and lodging.  I will now have to also start budgeting for onsite transportation....unless we take a cruise.