The Plan
The (mostly) European part of our sabbatical will be 5 months long. We will be traveling to at least 45 cities, 21 countries, and 3 continents. One big thing that dictated the spacing and locations of the trip was the Schengen Visa program. Basically, it states that you can spend a total of 90 days in a 180 day period in any country that has agreed to participate in the program. The Schengen countries are most of the continental European Union countries, Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland. The countries that are non-Schengen that we plan on visiting are the UK, Ireland, Croatia, Turkiye, and Morocco. We can go in and out of the Schengen countries as long as the total days we are there do not exceed 90 days. From what we have read, there is some gray area on how each day is counted (like travel days leaving or entering a Schengen country), and it is up to the discretion of individual border agents on how those days are counted. To avoid any issues, we are planning on having a buffer (around 3-4 days) to avoid going over the 90 day threshold. As of now, our count is at 84 Schengen days and 76 non-Schengen days.
We have gone through several iterations of the plan given our timeline, constraints, and visits with friends and family. One of our biggest/most recent changes is that we started off wanting to do long term rentals at Airbnb’s in 3 or 4 countries and do day/weekend trips to other sites. There were a couple of problems with this. The first is that it would not be budget friendly to pay for two concurrent accommodations. That would also almost double our travel budget since we would have to pay the additional costs of the return trips. The second and most important reason for not doing the long term rentals is that there are just too many places to visit!
Sarah enjoying a scone from Artisan Culture in The Woodlands, TX during a planning session (Mar 2022)
When we actually started putting our plans down on paper, we considered how to optimize cost (with the biggest being the flights to and from Europe), destinations we wanted to see, travel distance between cities, Schengen days, and downtime/chill time so that we do not run ourselves ragged. We have a habit of trying to fit way too much on a vacation and coming home exhausted. We decided to fly out of Denver, CO since our fur-babies were going to stay in the area. Although our sitter plans changed, we didn’t change our plane tickets since we love the mountain air and have friends and family to visit in the area. Weighing all of these things, it became obvious that beginning the overseas part of the trip in the UK made the most sense. London was the cheapest city for us to fly to compared to all other European cities. Once in Europe, travel becomes much easier and affordable (seriously, why is travel in the US so damned expensive?).
After the UK, we will bounce to Greece and hangout on nearby islands, Turkiye, and then Croatia where we will spend a good amount of time. After Croatia, we will work our way north then west. Some of your lovely stateside friends will be joining us for Oktoberfest in Munich. After that and checking out more places in Eastern Europe, we will bounce back west for visits in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Southern France, and then Italy to meet up with my dad and his wife for Thanksgiving. This will be my dad’s first trip to Europe, so we are super excited to show him a good time! After our goodbyes, we will hop back to the UK to visit their recent and our favorite Texas transplants there. We will be there for a week before we head back to the States for a breather and to meet our newest nieces and/or nephews! We will then make our last preparations for phase two of the sabbatical.
Without further adieu, here is the travel calendar we have prepared so far. The question marks mean we have no firm plans for that day.
If anyone has any suggestions for things to do in any of these cities, please feel free to leave a comment below!!
