Getting Ready for Europe!

In a couple days, we will be departing Buenos Aires for Dublin, Ireland and then backpacking through Europe for about a month.  As fun and off-the-cuff as it sounds, it actually takes a lot of preparation and research to backpack through Europe on a budget in the middle of summer.

First thing we did was buy a Eurail pass.  A Eurail pass is a train (and ferry) pass that allows you to travel from country to country in Europe with ease.  There are 28 countries participating (basically all of the EU) and you can freely travel through any of them.  Here are the routes:

The EU (European Union) was created so people, goods, services, etc. can freely travel through European countries without hassle (no customs or immigration).  Although each country has completely different languages and cultures, all countries have the same basic regulations, laws and currency.  This makes it really easy and convenient for tourists like us to travel between countries.  Yay!

It seems simple, but there are quite a few different options when buying a Eurail pass.  You can purchase a one country pass, a 2 country pass, a 4 country pass or an unlimited pass.  Let's say you choose the 4 country pass.  You pick your 4 countries and think it's all good and you can travel back and forth, at your leisure.  WRONG!  They have a 5 days in 2 months pass, 6 days in 2 months pass, 8 days in 2 months or 10 days in 2 months, meaning you only have that many actual travel days.  Let's say I get the 5 days in 2 months pass.  That means in 2 months, I can only be on a train 5 of those days.  I can take as many trains as I want on those 5 days, BUT I only get those 5 days to travel.  Are you as disappointed as I am?  Yea, it's stupid!  Basically, unless you have your entire trip planned out and know exactly which countries you're visiting and make sure you can do all train-travel in a certain number of days, you're screwed.

Since we didn't want to be screwed and didn't want to have to plan everything right now (we wanted to be able to leave some things to chance), we opted for the unlimited, meaning unlimited number of countries and unlimited number of travel days within one month.  Yes, it was crazy expensive (almost $2,000 for the two of us), but it includes most of our travel expenses for the month, so it had to be done.

Next up: lodging.  We're going the hostel route.  It's going to be hard to live in hostels for a month, but we're on a budget!  Not only are hostels NOT that cheap in Europe, but during summer (peak season) they're even more pricey.  We're talking $30/person/night just for a bed in a dorm at the absolute cheapest.  AND most are already booked months in advance, so it's slim pickings at this point.  This last minute, on a whim, vagabond backpacking through Europe thing is turning out to be anything but chill.  

I also had to book us a flight from Dublin to Amsterdam (our next stop).  This was before I knew the Eurail also had ferries (I kinda screwed that up).  The website I was recommended (from an actual European we met in Uruguay) was called SkyScanner (they even have an app).  It's like Kayak or Expedia (only European), where they price compare with different websites and airlines to get you the cheapest price.  I was able to get us a flight for $100 each (not bad!).

So far our schedule looks like this:

Leave Buenos Aires June 29

Layovers in Columbia and Spain

Arrive in Dublin July 1

Arrive in Amsterdam July 5

*Start using the Eurail!*

Arrive in Berlin July 9
Arrive in Paris July 12
Arrive in Nice July 16
We will probably leave Nice for Milan July 18, HOWEVER it will be Aaron's birthday, so I'll let him decide what he wants to do for his special day.
After Milan, we will go through all of Italy before settling in Barcelona.  We also want to go to Portugal before our Eurail passes expire.
Whew!  Here's a map in case you want to visualize where everything is:

 

After our month of backpacking, we will settle in Barcelona, Spain.  We booked our apartment in the neighborhood of Gracia.  Here's a map of Barcelona, separated by neighborhood, with Gracia in red at the top.

It's supposed to be beautiful, with lots of trendy, young places to hang.  Here are some pictures of our neighborhood (sorry they're fuzzy):

Here's our apartment (still fuzzy):

It's really small, but clean and bright and fully equipped.  Yes, it's 2 twin beds, but we can push them together.  I can't wait to settle in!  In case you were wondering, all this was for the low, low price of $1600/30 days.  Yes, pricey and yes, this was the cheapest one I could find that wasn't in the boonies.

So, this is what Europe is looking like so far.  It's going to require a lot of work and it's probably going to be a stressful and crazy month (we have to schlep all our luggage across the continent!), but it'll also be amazing and filled with excitement!  We are ready!