037- 18 tips for European travel

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One of my favorite things about travelling is learning new things. Here are 18 tips of things I learned on our recent trip to Amsterdam and Paris that I want to share. They aren't necessarily in any particular order...

#1- Use a travel agent- If you think travel agents are old school or not necessary, re-think this. We got connected with Shawn Hayes at Travel With Shawn through a college friend of Andy's. I've never really used a travel agent before because I always thought I could do all the bookings myself. And while I did book our flights and hotels myself, we are so glad we used Shawn to book our activities and train tickets. Could I have done this myself? Of course, but it was so work the money to give Shawn a list of the things we want to do and have her put together an itinerary for us. Once we moved a few things around, she booked everything and sent us a schedule on her cool app.

#2- Book a professional photo shoot- I've written about this on other travel posts. This is my new favorite "souvenir" item- having our photos done by a professional photographer where we travel. There's no better souvenir that photos taken showing the amazing things you see during your travels. We chose to have a session with the Eiffel Tower as the backdrop for most our our photos. I looked into a few photographers and ultimately chose Alex with ParisPics. Alex and his group of photographers do a fabulous job. Our photographer, Kate, took over 700 photos. What a great way to celebrate our 25th anniversary.

#3- Schedule "down time" days- As much as you want to see everything and not suffer from FOMO, it's so important to have some gaps in your travel itinerary. Schedule some empty time slots. Give yourself time to relax or just wander around exploring. Especially when you are in a new place, or even if you aren't, one of my favorite parts of travelling is seeing new things. Maybe you stumble on this awesome little cafe (we did this a couple times). Or maybe you find this amazing little hole in the wall bookstore that you could spend hours in (we did this too!). Give yourself some time without a schedule.

#4- Avoid travelling by train or metro with luggage- Sometimes there are escalators or elevators, but don't count on it, especially in metro stations. I know some people will say not to pack such a big or heavy suitcase, but that doesn't work for me. Even if I pack light-ish going on my trip, I want to be able to buy things while I'm there to remember my trip. Sometimes those things are heavy-ish. We made it work when we had to (from Amsterdam to Paris), but carrying a 50+ pound suitcase up a couple flights of stairs is challenging, just ask Andy ;-). We chose to take an uber to the airport in Paris for our outbound travel and it was so worth it.

#5- Use the metro- on a related note, use the metro or tram, if it's available. I can't imagine taking a taxi or uber all over the cities in Europe. The cost and time it would take would use up the two most important resources of travel: time and money. Nor can I ever fathom driving a car! The public transportation in most European cities is awesome! It's a several bucks a day for a multi-day pass, and you can go anywhere you need to go. Most of the time, you won't have to change metro trains more than once to get to everywhere in the city.

#6- Warning- metro doors WILL close- on another related note, if the metro buzzes the doors WILL close. There was one instance where I made it on and Andy didn't due to the crowd of people trying to get on. Luckily I was able to get off on the next stop and wait for the next metro train that Andy was on. Some of the metro trains are so crowded that there are a lot of people in one little space trying to get on and off at the same time. Be aware of how much time you have so you don't get separated from your travel partner(s).

#7- Travel with a good navigator- I struggle with sense of direction. Therefore, travel navigating is not my strong point. I highly suggest you designate one person to be the head navigator. If you travel with me, it will most likely not be me. I did much better in Paris than I did in Amsterdam. I'm not sure if it's because I'd been there before. Andy got a good laugh several times when I had no idea what direction our hotel was, or whether we were walking towards or away from a particular monument. Good phone apps make a big difference too. For example, the Paris metro has an app and you could put in where you are starting out and where you are trying to go. Super helpful.

#8- Confirm train tickets- Make sure you confirm your train tickets a day or two before you travel. We had an issue with our tickets when trying to get from Amsterdam to Paris. Apparently the first leg of our train journey had been cancelled for planned construction, but the train company failed to notify us. We showed up at the train station only to be told, oh sorry that train isn't running today. Luckily we had a very helpful train employee who told us which train to get on and the route that we needed to take to get where we were going. It changed our timetable a bit, but it worked out.

#9- Check money exchange rate and markup- I've been told multiple times that the best exchange rate you get is through an ATM. I guess I never really paid attention before but apparently the exchange rate and markup percentage can vary greatly. We tried to grab some cash at an airport ATM in Amsterdam and I noticed the markup was 19%! If I would've completed the transaction, 500 euro would've cost us around $650. We cancelled that transaction and decided to try later. I think the other couple times we checked at ATM's the markup ranged from 6-11%. The other thing you need to look at is the exchange rate. It varied quite a bit from ATM to ATM. Just something to keep an eye on.

#10- Read the fine print on activities tickets- Sometimes you'll end up with two activities on one ticket. We had a canal boat cruise and a tour of the Heineken Experience on the same ticket. The ticket said it started at 2:30pm. The fine print of the ticket said to go to the boat company to check in first. Once we did that, they told us that the 2:30pm time on the ticket was actually for the Heineken Experience and that we could do the boat cruise anytime that day. Of course we had to hurry it over to Heineken at that point and ended up being a few minutes late. Luckily they let us in anyway. On that same note, give yourself plenty of time to get to your activities. We ended up in the middle of the Amsterdam marathon trying to cross the street.

#11- Know that "skip the line" tickets are not quite that- Tickets to attractions that you buy ahead of time usually say skip-the-line on them. This is not really accurate. What it really means is that you have a prepaid ticket, many times with a specific time, for the attraction. You do usually get to go in a shorter line, but there is no line skipping going on. For example, when we went to the Eiffel Tower we had a skip-the-line ticket with summit access. When we arrived at our designated time, we stood in a separate line than those who showed up that day without a ticket. We were guaranteed summit access (300 meters up!), whereas those without prepaid tickets didn't even have that option. Definitely get prepaid tickets but don't expect you'll get to jump ahead of anyone in line.

#12- Skip the Louvre and pick smaller museums- this might be an unpopular opinion. The Louvre, while amazing, is SO OVERWHELMING and huge! We went there with good intentions of seeing a lot of different kinds of art from all over the world, but it was just too much. The place is like a huge maze and there are a lot of people. We ended up finding the Mona Lisa, looking at a few other pieces and heading out. I wish we would've went to some of the smaller museums but that will have to wait for next time. One of my favorite parts of the Louvre was the outside pyramid, but you can see that without buying a ticket.

#13 & 14- Buy rain ponchos and have bag for wet ponchos- We knew we'd get some rain on our trip. We had an umbrella (btw, one is not enough especially when two people with a 10 inch height difference) and bought another one. We had rain jackets and appropriate footwear. Rain was forecasted for the day we went to Paris Disneyland so we decided to buy ponchos to take with us. That was a great decision! Once it started really raining that day, it just wasn't practical to try to use an umbrella. Enter rain ponchos. We wore them all around Disneyland and they did a good job keeping us and our backpack dry. The other piece of advice is to have a bag to put the wet ponchos in when you aren't wearing them so they don't get the inside of your bag/backpack soaking wet. Once we got back to the hotel, we just hung them up in the shower to dry.

#15- Try new foods- This is a given for traveling, in my opinion. One thing we tried in Amsterdam was a platter of Dutch favorites at a pub we ended up at for dinner. A couple of these things that were interesting were deep friend balls of gravy, deep friend cheese sticks (local Gouda cheese, not like American mozzarella sticks), and cheese with a mustard dipping sauce. Another thing we tried was fresh, country bread with a garlic mayo spread. I thought a mayo spread sounded really weird, but it was surprisingly good. In Paris, we had escargot (I had tried this before, but Andy hadn't).

#16- Tell your hotel(s) if it's a special occasion- I let both hotels know that we were there celebrating our 25th anniversary. Our hotel in Amsterdam, Hotel Eden Amsterdam, decorated our bed and left us a snack and drinks board, with a cute little congratulatory note. In Paris, at Hotel de Empereur,

they left us a bottle of champagne with real glasses and a nice little note.

#17- Send postcards on first day- we all know that it takes awhile to get postcards in the mail. I wish we would've sent more but we weren't very good about this. It seems like they take about 10 days from Europe to the U.S. I'd like to have them arrive while we are still travelling but it's hard to make that happen. One thing to do to improve the chances is to mail them the first day you get there. But then of course, you haven't really seen or done anything at that point so...

#18- Take a night time bus tour- a spur of the moment thing that we did was to take a night time bus

tour all around the city of Paris. Was this super touristy? Sure, but we liked it. Many of the monuments and attractions were lit up so that was fun to see. We chose to sit on the upper level of the double decker bus so we could really see a lot of things. We sat in the very front so we were protected by a partially glassed in area. It was still chilly so I am glad we bought a blanket at Monoprix (kind of a cross between a Target and TJ Maxx). We ended the night with a full view of the lit-up Eiffel Tower. On the hour, from dark to dawn, the Eiffel Tower lights sparkle for five minutes. That was a really cool way to end the tour. We actually hopped off the bus at that spot and grabbed a metro back to our hotel.

I plan to write another posts about some of the amazing things we did and saw, but I wanted to share these 18 tips on how to make it a great trip! I'm proud of us for trying new things and exploring new cities. Get out there and travel- make yourself proud!