The Itinerary and The Plan

 

Everyone I speak to about our upcoming trip is always in awe at the fact that there is a total of 16 people signed up to travel abroad. Our honeymoon grew substantially from "just the two of us" to "now there's 16 of us." Once one friend heard of the adventure we were planning, more and more decided to join us. Here are my tips for planning a trip that includes 16 people with different tastes, different personalities and different ideas/itineraries.

 

-Google Hangouts: this has been an extremely helpful took in organizing between 16 people. In order to use this tool, every member must have a gmail account. Then simply create a hangout and add people to your group. This is basically a chatroom where we talk about our trip, give tips and discuss where we're going, who will be staying where, etc. There is an app that can be used to access this chatroom as well as online using a computer. The app helps because it allows me to update using my iphone or read any new messages that are posted.

 

-Google Docs-This has been the second instrumental tool that we've used to plan this trip. The way it works is you have a word document and you can add people to the document that will have access to read the document or to edit the document. Most schools are using this resource for group projects and papers. So what Super Nel and I did is we sat down and put together our dream honeymoon in Europe. Then we posted it on the google document. We allowed our group moon friend to edit the itinerary with their own updates. Some people will be departing with us and then going on their own adventure after a few countries. And other friends will be joining us later in the trip. Some friends are going for 2 or 3 weeks and others are doing a full month like us.                                                                               

 

-Due to the fact that everyone in the group has different personalities and different ideas about what they want to do on their trip it helps to make it very clear from the beginning that everyone should plan their own itinerary. We use the google hangout/chatroom and itinerary for people to get ideas about what they want to do in each country, where they want to stay (hostel, hotel, airbnb, etc) and other activties. It would be nearly impossible to plan a trip this big with so many people and incorporate what everyone wants to do. Impossible. So far, this style of planning has worked out pretty well for our group.        

 

-Start your planning as soon as possible. So far, we have planned all our transportation and places to stay. Our individual activities for each day are in the works. We started planning in October 2014 and our trip is early spring 2015. This gives us about 6 months total planning time. This also helps with costs-the flights, hotels, etc are cheaper if you start planning 6 months in advance or sooner.                                                                                             &&&&-When you have such a big group it helps to have smaller groups as well. Our 16 group is divided into smaller groups of two, three or four. This allows everyone to have have someone to book flights, hostel/hotels and an individualized itinerary. This will also help with travel cost (split cost of accommodations, share food or toiletries). And since we are backpacking (packing light) if you have a small group that you're bunking with you can share things like toiletries, flashlights, wardrobes, etc.

                                                                                                                                                         

-Have fun! Not everyone enjoys planning as much as I do. Hopefully one person in your group will enjoy the madness and you can be their support person to bounce ideas off of. I always like to play to everyone's strengths. Super Nel loves to plan and research places to eat. So I leave the food plannign up to him. I love planning in general so I do most of the places to stay, transportation and sleeping places.                                                                              

 

-I have listed below our itinerary as of today (it's constantly changing with updates and news based on what people book/add). I've taken the names out of the itinerary to protect identities. Another thing that's helpful is to color code everyone's specific itinerary. So in our document everyone has a color and when if someone updates with a flight or hostel booking they use their assigned color to track who is doing what and where.

 

 

Group Honeymoon Itinerary

Europe 2015

#adventureisoutthere #friendsseetheworld

Day 1: Depart for London

-Where: Los Angeles Airport

-Arrive London, Gatwick Airport Day 2 @ 12:50pm

*Total of 11 people in London

Day 2: Check into London Hostel

*Total of 11 people in London

Day 3-London

*Total of 11 people in London

Day 4: Depart for Amsterdam

Check into Amsterdam Hostel

*Total of 14 people in Amsterdam on this night

Day 5: Amsterdam

**Three more friends arrive in Amsterdam 18:50

*Total of 14 people in Amsterdam

Day 6: Amsterdam

*Total of 14 people in Amsterdam

Day 7: Amsterdam

*Total of 14 people in Amsterdam

Day 8: Amsterdam

Check out from hostel and enjoy last day in Amsterdam before departing for Berlin, Germany via Easy Jet

Check into Berlin hotel

*Total of 14 people in Amsterdam this day

*Total of 10 people in Berlin (3 friends fly to Prague and 1 to England)

Day 9: Berlin

*Total of 10 people in Berlin

Day 10: Berlin 

**Two more friends arrive in Berlin 21:25
*Total of 12 people in Berlin 

Day 11: Berlin
Check out of hotel, enjoy last day in Berlin 
*Depart via overnight train to Poland, Krakow, You can book this train using the Polish railways website www.intercity.pl. 
*Total of 12 people in Berlin on this day

*Total of 9 people on train to Krakow (3 friends depart for Rome)

Day 12: Arrive in Krakow
Check into Krakow Hotel

-Visit Auschwitz

*Total of 9 people in Krakow 

Day 13: Explore Krakow and hop on train back to Berlin

Options: Take night train back or early train back and book hostel/hotel for night

*Total of 9 people in Krakow this day/night

Day 14: Depart for Cinque Terre via Rome
Easy Jet flight to Rome
Check into Rome Hostel 

*Spend night in Rome and depart for CT via train in am on 4/1

*Total of 12 people in Rome (meet up with 3 friends who arrived in Rome early from Berlin)_
**3 friends in Prague depart for home

Day 15: Cinque Terre

Check into Cinque Terre hostel

*Total 12 in Cinque Terre this day

Day 16: Cinque Terre

*Total 12 in Cinque Terre this day
**1 friend departs from London to home

Day 17: Cinque Terre

*Total 12 in Cinque Terre this day

Day 18: Depart for Paris
Easy Jet to Paris
Check into hotel and go to the Lourve, see Eiffel Tower at night

*Total of 12 in Paris 

Day 19: Paris-Visit Chateau of Versailles

*Total of 9 in Paris (3 friends depart for Spain)

Day 20: Check out and prep to leave Paris for Provence, France

Go see Eiffel Tower in daytime

Train from Paris to Marseille and drive to Luberon

Check into hotel

*Total 4 people in Provence, France this night (3 friends depart for Prague, 2 still undecided)

Day 21: Provence, France

*Total 4 people in Provence, France

Day 22: Provence, France

*Total 4 people in Provence, France this night (2 friends in Prague depart for home, 1 friend in Prague departs to Spain, 3 friends already in Spain depart for home)

Day 23: Prepare to depart Provence, France for Barcelona, Spain

Drive car back to Marseille, take flight from Marseilles to Barcelona via Vueling 
Check into Barcelona Hostel
*Total 5 in Barcelona 

Day 24: Barcelona, Spain
*Total 5 in Barcelona

Day 25: Check out of Barcelona hostel and travel to Madrid

Vueling flight from Barcelona to Madrid

Check into Madrid Hostel
*Total 4 in Madrid (1 friend departs for home)

Day 26: Madrid
*Total 4 in Madrid

Day 27 : Madrid, Spain
*Total 4 in Madrid
 

Day 28: Madrid, Spain
*Total 4 in Madrid

Day 29: Depart for Home

(2 friends stay and fly to Switzerland for another week of fun)

And so it begins...

A new travel post! This blog has a new title and will have some fresh new material since there is a big trip in the near future (with a bunch of small ones in between). So much has changed since my last blog post-most importantly I got married! Remember that dashing and handsome young man I went to Europe with in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Underpants blog? He talked me into a lifetime of adventures together. Super Nel and I had an Up themed non-traditional wedding on the beach (hence the name of this blog-Adventure is Out There!). It was basically a big party with a short ceremony at the beginning. Everybody had a wonderful time and after the wedding was over we were very excited to start planning the honeymoon! The honeymoon will be the focus of all my future posts for the next 4-5 months. 

Our plan: a month long honeymoon in Europe. We had so much fun during our last Eurotrip that we want to go back. This time we'll be seeing different European countries and cities and we won't be going alone. Our honeymoon has turned into a group moon with a total headcount of sixteen people (at the time of this post). Once we started talking with friends about how much fun we had on our last Eurotrip and the itinerary we have planned for this trip many of them decided to join us. And so the title "group moon" was invented.

My goal is to post on this blog weekly and the posts prior to our trip will include all the research that goes into planning a big trip such as this one with so many people. There has already been a ton of planning that has taken place up to this point (we've been planning since October 2014) so I'll do my best to play catch up on the next post. If you didn't get the chance to read any of the Sisterhood blog posts I encourage you to do so. If you'd rather not, here's some info to know about me and my blog: I'll mainly write about travel adventures that I take with my husband/friends/alone. We enjoy traveling locally (USA) as well as to different countries. We try to find a middle of the road budget that includes frugal deals and cheap finds as well as splurges along the way. My husband loves to eat (who doesn't?) so he usually does most of the research for eating and he has graciously volunteered to play photographer for this blog (thanks in part to the fancy camera I gave him as a wedding present).

If you would like any specific questions answered about our adventures, please write it at the end of the blog post (you'll need a google account to do so).

The next post will have our proposed itinerary for Eurotrip 2015.

Happy Travels!