Terri and Adam’s Philosophy and Food Tour 2023: T Minus 2 Months
In two months, my soon-to-be 22 year old son Adam and I will be heading to Europe to celebrate his college graduation (Chapman University, Philosophy). It’s just me and him from 24May — 12Jun and I thought it would be fun to provide a sneak peek into not only the trip, but the planning and research as well.
The current plan is:
— 2 nights in Amsterdam
— Train to Paris and 2 nights in Paris
— Flight to Venice and 2 nights in Venice
— Italo train to Bologna and 1 night in Bologna
— Rent car in Bologna and drive to Florence; stay in an agriturismo (farm) outside of Florence, drive, park, take the bus into Florence each day; 3 nights here due to Italy’s Festa della Repubblica on June 2nd
— Drive to Rome and meander for 5 days and 4 nights with a day in Assisi
— 4 nights in Rome
Adam and I spent a few hours a day this past week researching cities, activities, transportation options, and where to stay.
I reached out to Donato of Donato Enoteca and Cru here in Redwood City for his suggestions and he didn’t disappoint. He gave us a list of restaurants to check out and offered to make some winery reservations for us as well.
Right after we booked the flights back in February, I went to Barnes and Noble to pick up some guidebooks and maps for the trip. Truthfully, the guidebooks are a bit overwhelming and I’ve spent more time watching YouTube videos than perusing the books.
The maps on the other hand, have been really helpful. I also know we will use them when we are on the road in Italy as we plan to explore by car between Bologna and Rome. While we will rely on my phone for navigation, I like to see the bigger picture on a paper map.
I’ve switched from French to Italian on Duolingo, ordered some short stories in both languages, and picked up another language training tool from intrepiditalian. I’m studying about an hour a day and hope to get as proficient as an Italian 3 year old by the time we leave.
Adam, pictured here in Paris in August 2015, wants to leave plenty of time to wander while on our trip. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, most places we want to visit require reservations with specific timeslots to control the number of people in each place.
Planned / Booked So Far
So while we would love to be completely spontaneous, if we want to visit specific places, we have to do some planning. So far, we’ve booked:
— Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. We are doing both in the same day with enough time for lunch in between. We tried to get into the Vermeer exhibit at the Rijksmuseum but tickets for Feb-June sold out back in February in just 4.5 days
— La Galleria dell’Acadmeia di Firenze and Le Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence. We are doing both in the same day to leave plenty of time to wander, eat, and drink.
Still in the Works:
— Venice: Donato encouraged us to say on the Venice island (we learned there are something ike 130 islands that make up Venice) so once we’ve booked the hotel, we will book a gondola ride so we can get a sense of the place by water. We may not book any specific museums or sights here.
— Paris: Adam wants to go to Musee d’Orsay, Rodin Gardens, l’Orangerie, and Jardins des Tuileries, only two of which have admission fees, so we are debating whether to get the Museum Pass. We’d still need reservations for the Orsay and l’Orangerie. We can decide this in early May.
— Assisi: we may leave this one to the last minute, once we leave or are in Florence and have a better sense of where and when we want to go.
— Rome: I’ve reached out to a guide my friend Lisa used a few years ago so we can schedule private tours of the Colisseum and Vatican City in Rome. Once those are scheduled, we will book tickets for the Borghese (the tickets we want aren’t on sale until April 15th)
Transportation:
— Flights: we’ve booked United from SFO to Amsterdam with a return from Rome.
— Amsterdam — Paris: we booked a train on Thalys which I haven’t used before.
— Paris — Venice: after considering multiple options including a train from Paris to Torino, and Donato’s encouragement not to miss Venice, we booked an EasyJet flight from the Paris Orly airport to Venice. I’ve not been to Orly and we wanted to add a lot of new-to-both-of-us things to our itinerary.
— Venice — Bologna: initially we were going to rent a car in Venice to begin our road trip but decided to take the Italo train to Bologna instead. For about $100, I got us the best tickets available so we can check out their club lounge at the train station and have a top of the line experience.
— Bologna — Florence — Rome: after exhaustively researching options, and attempting to use Hertz to get more points, I opted for Europcar. I considered Sixt as well but I couldn’t figure out where to return the car outside of Rome. I don’t want to drive in Rome and wanted to return the car to a train station to make it easier to get into Rome. I paid extra so Adam can drive since he’s under 25.
I am savoring the planning process and I am actively suppressing the planner in me who would love to have it all figured out NOW. More to come!
By the way, if you are curious about my trip last summer with my youngest, check out Terri and Finn’s European Adventure.
About the Author
Terri Hanson Mead is the multi-award winning author of Piloting Your Life, Managing Partner of Solutions2Projects, LLC, and an advocate for women through all of her platforms including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and this blog. Terri is the mother of two college aged kids, is based in Redwood City, CA and in her spare time, loves to travel, cook, play tennis, and fly helicopters around the San Francisco Bay Area, especially under the Golden Gate Bridge.
