European Getaway 1997

Yulin & Peter Lee

It has been our plan to take an extended vacation and go explore Europe on our own schedule. After about 8 months of planning, it became a reality. Looking through the maps and planning our itenerary, 30 days no longer seem like a lot of time, so we decided to focus on just two countries--France and Italy--and try to stay at each city as long as possible. The objective is not to claim that we have been to all the famous places, but to be able to really "know" a city.

This is a chronicle of our trip with some tips on what we would have done better next time around. Of course, there are lots of pictures too.

Itenerary

Week#	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
1		9/1 SFO	9/2 Paris	9/3 Paris	9/4 Paris	9/5 Fontainbleau	9/6 Paris
2	9/7 Versailles	9/8 Chartres	9/9 Paris	9/10 Loire	9/11 Loire	9/12 Avignon	9/13 Nice
3	9/14 Nice	9/15 Nice	9/16 Nice	9/17 Nice	9/18 Levanto	9/19 Florence	9/20 Florence
4	9/21 Florence	9/22 Pisa	9/23 Florence	9/24 Siena	9/25 Florence	9/26 Venice	9/27 Venice
5	9/28 Venice	9/29 Venice	9/30 Milan	10/1 Milan	10/2 Lago Maggiore	10/3 SFO

Photographic Equipment

We each started with a single rolling carry on bag. When leaving SFO, we had absolutely no checked lugguage! Peter brought two cameras, a Rollei 35 and a Leica Mini (P&S). The Rollei was loaded with Kodak Ektachrome and the Leica was loaded with Kodak Gold 100. Since I don't have a slide scanner, most of the pictures on these pages were taken with the Leica Mini except for one roll of Kodak Gold 100 used in Paris. Overall, we took 8 rolls of pictures and 6 rolls of slides.

Books

Before the trip, I purchased and read a large quantity of tour books. For city guides, I highly recommend the series by Lonely Planet. More specifically, I carried Lonely Planet Paris in my backpocket for the entire Paris segment. For Florence, Venice and Nice, I had the ones from another publisher which are not as comprehensive and useful as the Lonely Planet guides.

What Else to Bring

Other than cameras and books, the binoculars is the one piece of equipment that is well worth its weight. With the binoculars, I can study the mosaics and stain glass in churches. Even in museums, I can use it to see paintings from far away or see the details of sculptures. Bring a small 10X binoculars. You won't regret it.

As far as money goes, I prefer bringing enough cash (in Lira) for at least the first few days instead of using travellers checks. It's too much of a hassle to look for a bank to exchange US dollar checks for local currency. If you use travellers checks at a store, you end up with really poor exchange rates. In Italy, there are still many stores that will not take any credit cards, so be prepared with cash. You can also get cash in local currency from ATM machines. That's another good way to get cash without paying poor exchange rates. Only under emergency circumstances should you use the street-side Cambio (Money Exchangers) because their rate is the worst you can find. Use credit card wherever possible. This may mean that you need to have one of each of Visa, MasterCard and American Express. Seems like Visa and American Express are the most popular ones.

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