Plan something light and not too taxing for arrival day.  You will not have all your reasoning facilities working on that day!  Early night and up early to start next day.

Normally you will awaken very early while you are there.  However, if you have something like a train booked on day 3 don’t count on waking up early.The last time I went to Italy I just knew I would wake up early….I always do!  Long story short….the B&B vacuum cleaner outside my door awakened me at 11 am!!  My train was at noon…….major hussling to get to the train station on time!

Moral of the story….set an alarm always if you have a schedule to keep! In filling up your days make sure you are not trying to cram all of Europe in a few days!  Put in enough time for you to savour where you are.  Time to stroll the side streets and really see a place.  It is better to concentrate on a smaller area and go back to see the rest!

You can only see so much before you have sensory overload.  The castles and churches will all start to run together.

Enjoy the moments.

Have time to stop and investigate as we did in Hay-on-Wye, Wales.  We were walking down the main street of the little village looking for bookstores.  That is the reason we went to Hay-on-Wye…it is known for its many bookstores full of antiquities.   We heard the sounds of something that sounded like an auction……we followed our ears.  We came upon one of the coolest scenes in our travels.  A Welsh auction in progress…. complete with the auctioneer rattling off in their dialect and the farmers in their gum boots.  Such a neat, totally unplanned item on our itinerary!

If you have too much packed in you will say “no we can’t stop, we have to be at so and so at such and such a time…let’s go!” and there you will go sailing right past a moment you would fondly remember the rest of your life….perhaps the highlight of your trip….totally unplanned!

Plans are just that….plans…..they should not be too concrete.  Enjoy the journey!