One of our main goals while living in London was to travel throughout Europe. We knew that living in London would make a perfect base for seeing the many sights scattered through Europe and that the short distances would make that more do-able with small children. Now, eighteen months on, we can say that we have plenty more to see but certainly have managed to accomplish our goal so far.
Traveling, especially with kids, brings on its own set of difficulties. Costs, booking accommodations, making sure you pack the pacifier and stuffed animals for cuddles. But believe it or not, one of the most difficult parts about traveling for us when we first arrived was deciding where to go. Moving to London, we were overwhelmed by the choices. We couldn't even decide where to go for day trips outside of London.
Since we now have visited nine places in Europe and eight places in the United Kingdom, you can say we have overcome that obstacle. I think its interesting in how we have overcome that obstacle and decided where to go.
First, we bought a book "Frommer's Best Day Trips from London." It has twenty-five different day trips it recommends, each places that you can easily visit in one day. It neatly narrows down our local UK options to twenty-five and eliminates any of those dodgy day trips that "infrastructure" would make a day trip really difficult. We have now visited almost half of the places in the book.
Second, Bryan started looking at runnersworld.co.uk and related forums. He used the sites to find races in the UK and in Europe that were recommended. We would never have been to Deal or Lausanne if not for those sites. We have an upcoming trip to Nice for him to do the Nice-Cannes marathon and our trips to York and Winchester were for races.
Third, we also bought "1000 Places to See Before You Die." It is not a travel guide. It does, however, pick from the millions of things to see and helps you focus on the best things.
Finally, we had to adopt a just do-it attitude. We picked a place we wanted to see, booked tickets and went. Traveling is really about the journey. We had to learn things are never perfect and to learn from each trip. We go places, explore them and see where it takes us. Every trip is an exploration, all places with the possibility to return.
