Hey!
Okay, first of all. By popular concensus the Euro Trip has been cut down to one month or less. Is one month still too long?
Also, if you have the email addresses of the following people, please give them to me or forward this letter to them: brian anderson, sara moledor, michael mure, robby glass, eric handa, chris ash, alex dorman, and katie didomenico.
I managed to look up some Rail Pass Deals. And the best one I could get is the Eurail Pass Saver. Its for 2-5 people travelling at the same time. (It might have changed to be more people, I have to email the companies and ask them). Its one month of unlimited consecutive travel for $818.00 in first class, so out groups work out perfectly and we have 5 per group then it will be $160.00 per person. If there are less people per group it will go up a little, of course. This is the best deal for consecutive and nonconsecutive travel. Even the youth deals wouldn't be better. If you want to check it out go to : www.eurail.com or www.raileurope.com .
So far our general route of travel is:
Fly into Athens, Greece
take a train to Patras
Ferry from Patras to Brindisi, Italy.
*Ferry expenses are included in our Eurail pass so this won't cost us anything but a day of travel (but our travel is a month long and unlimited so it costs us nothing).
From there, according to the maps of the trains we can go to Lecce, thruTaranto and thru Potenza Inferiore
to Solerno which takes us thru Pompei
To Napoli/Naples
To Rome
To Firenze/Florence
To Venice
To Geneva, Switzerland
*From Geneva to Zurich is really complicated. We can wrestle with the cities in between and figure out a travel route (like that mess you're seeing in Italy). Or we can take a tourist scenic route on the Golden Pass Line (I have to see if this is included in our passes, but im pretty sure it is. Or we can take the highspeed ICN. The ICN is faster, but if we want to see the scenic rout then we could do the other one. All this can be seen here: http://downloads.raileurope.com/pdf/maps/switzerland.html So give me some feed back on that please.
To Zurich
Then somehow we have to get to Munich, Germany, Im sure there's a way.
Thru Nuremburg to Berlin
To Luxembourg, Luxembourg (?)
To Amsterdam
To Brussels, Belguim
To Paris, France
Then there are also a number of options we can take here. I was thinking we could cut down the side thru Lyon, Avignon, Nimes, Beziers, Perpignan and etc, but our ultimate goal is to get from Paris to Barcelona, so give me other routes, or tell me if there are cities in France we should pass thru instead of those. Like Bordeaux?
To Barcelona
Thru Valencia, Spain
To Madrid
Fly home.
Obviously this is not set in stone or whatever. give me feedback on the routes. Especially the switzerland and france thing. Also, we should probably have a meeting at some point so out parents will let us go. So, if you can get an okay without that meeting do it, but if not tell me when you are going to be out of town so we know when to plan this for. Also, we cant really do anything in the way of looking up hostels until we have our general travel route. So get back to me on that. We want to look really organized so that we will be allowed to go. Also, trip dates are probably through June. Last day of school next year is June 2. But we will be seniors, so we just have to figure out when graduation is. Probably June 1st or May 31st (APS website does not say yet). Do we want to leave right after graduation? Or a week after. I think a day or two because we will have already been out of school for 2 weeks before that, so we'll have time to pack and be bored. Get back to me on that too.
I think that's all for now. Tell me if I left our a city. Marisa, how many people can your relatives hold in Carro Villi? Its between Rome and Florence, so it is on the way.
If anyone can find out useful information for us, that would be great. email me at [email protected]
People Interested: Brian Anderson, Ted Weissfeld, Kala Levine, Andy Christopher, Chris Brun, Pat Fahey, Sara Moledor, Marisa Hansel, Latoya Irvine, Michael Mure, Robby Glass, Eric Handa, Andrew Guran, Chris Ash, Aleksandr Dorman, and Katie Didomenico.
*If you are going on the Spanish trip these dates will most likely interfere.
Please try to confirm as soon as possible in the interests of planning and travel costs. We want to buy our plane tickets in the fall or winter at least so we can get a good deal and seats together. If anyone has any ideas about that, email or call me. 330-338-3926, anytime.
Thanks,
Kala