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(First of 5 countries) 8 week trip.

Europe 2002, Spain

Jvi
2004-09-14 12:54:35

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This was the longest trip we have taken to Europe and it was to last 8 weeks. Many of our friends were sure we would stop talking by the third week but those of you who know me, know how easy I am to get along with. Nevertheless, on our last night in a bar in Bruges, Belgium, I asked Christine how the trip had gone. She said that she needed another laundry and a dry cleaner and she could go another 8 weeks. Basically, we both had a great time and the time went very fast. We will do it again.

We used British Airways frequent flyer miles to travel Chicago-London-Malaga, Spain, and returned Brussels, Belgium-London-Chicago. We booked five other flights either through Expedia or directly through Olympic Airlines (for the inter island flights in Greece). We road trains, buses, took an overnight ferry from Rethymon, Crete, to Athens, rented three cars and leased a car for five weeks through Renault (fantastic deal). We walked a lot, mostly uphill as most European towns are at the top of the hill. We walked the 18 kilometer Samaria Gorge in Crete and this was downhill to the Libyan Sea. We each carried one daypack as a carry on bag and one small 22 inch bag on wheels that we checked. I had two small nylon bags hidden in my bag and when Christine found out I had them she proceeded to fill them so by the time we turned in the car in Brussels and flew home, we had four bags to check.

On the flight over we had to transfer from Heathrow to Gatwick on Speedlink and that cost 14 pounds each. British Airways used to pay for the transfer if you had both flights on one ticket but they don't anymore. Gatwick was a zoo and they have one big line that wraps around the terminal. we went through something called "Fast Bag Drop" but it wasn't as there were seveal people in line who should not have been there. We had time to kill so we had some coffee and talked to a nice woman from Malta, now Christine wants to go to Malta.

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