A friend asked how we are doing this. How do we make travel arrangements, find apartments, transportation, and places to go? It's really quite simple—research on the internet. I have literally spent hundreds of hours staring at my laptop, voraciously reading about all aspects of travel from where to go and what to see to other traveler’s accounts of their trips. Some websites have been invaluable in my quest to find the right apartments in Paris and Barcelona and the perfect B&B in the Cotswolds. Here are some of the better websites and resources I’ve found.

Transportation

We’re obviously going to fly to many places. For air reservation, I think Kayak at http://www.kayak.com can’t be beat. It’s simple to use and compares multiple airline flights and costs, including international flights.

Because we are retired, we have time. This means we’re not in a hurry to get anywhere and have the luxury of taking our time getting to our destination. For traveling to Europe from the US, you can’t beat a repositioning cruise. Twice a year, usually in March to April and October to November, the major cruise lines move their ships from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean for the season. These transatlantic crossings are less expensive than an in-season cruise, especially if booked far in advance. Anyone who has flow internationally knows the torture of a 12+ hour flight overseas in coach class. Not to mention the discomfort of jet lag when you get to the other side of the world. A repositioning cruise provides transportation in a more comfortable form, including room and meals for two weeks. We used the website http://www.repositioningcruise.com to find our cruises. Having cruised before, we were familiar with the various cruise lines and have our favorites and not-so-favorites that we knew to avoid. If you want to know more about the different cruise lines and ships, the website Cruise Critic at http://www.cruisecritic.com is very helpful. They even have videos that show some of the major ships and their amenities. We are taking a Disney cruise from Port Canaveral to Barcelona the end of May and a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship from Barcelona to Miami at the end of October. So, the rest of our trip is sandwiched between these two cruises during the months of May and October this year.

Apartments

Because we are staying in each of our destinations for about a month, we prefer to rent a small apartment and live like the locals. I’ve used several websites to find and research apartments. I start with VRBO at http://www.vrbo.com and HomeAway at http://www.homeaway.com to search for apartments that are for short term rent by owners. Sometimes I find that small agencies also list their apartments on these sites as well as individual homeowners, so that will often lead me to the agency’s website. That’s how I found Like Living There! at http://www.likelivingthere.com/Index.html. They manage apartment rentals in Paris and Barcelona which happen to be our beginning and ending cities this trip. I started an email conversation with Ron who writes a blog at http://www.likelivingthere.blogspot.com/.   He was very helpful and patient as I sifted through dozens of apartment listings to find just the right one for us. I used VRBO to find our apartment in Richmond-on-Thames outside of London.

For some destinations, we are staying in B & B’s, short for Bed and Breakfast. This type of lodging is more common and very affordable in rural areas like the Cotswolds in England and in Ireland. The TripAdvisor website is invaluable in researching this type of lodging because they rank the establishments according to the feedback from their huge group of users who have actually stayed at the places. I’ve never been steered wrong with TripAdvisor recommendations and/or warnings!

Another website I’m now exploring is Slow Travel at http://www.slowtrav.com/. There are forums with travel accounts and trip reports that are helpful and interesting. They aren’t affiliated with any rental agencies but do make recommendations based on their members’ experiences.

Destinations

As for deciding where to go, let your heart and soul guide you. Go places you’ve read about and yearned to see for yourself. We are beginning in Paris, the City of Light, just because it’s always held an allure and romance that’s hard to resist. Paris is the center of art, culture, romance, beauty and all gastronomical delights, as well as the best wine, cheese and pastry in the world. Then, we are traveling to England by AeroStar train, also known as the Chunnel train that tunnels under the English Channel. Having never been on a high speed train, we chose this transportation for the experience itself. London and the quaint English countryside of the Cotswolds are our next stop, and we’ll spend a couple weeks at both locations. Then we’re flying to Dublin to spend a month exploring the Irish countryside. We know the last month of our trip, October, will be in Barcelona as our ship leaves from there the end of October to return to the States. However, we have another month or so that we are still planning. We’ve considered Portugal for a Mediterranean holiday in a beach town, but now we are leaning more towards Switzerland and the Alps. It’s important to us to be flexible, so we’re not afraid to do some more talking and researching and change our mind if we find something more appealing.

We’ve found Rick Steves’ videos and guidebooks very helpful in deciding where we want to visit. His website at http://www.ricksteves.com has videos and written guides of many destinations. We’ll probably sit down and watch his Switzerland videos today and talk more about where we’d like to go this year. After all, there’s always next year, too!