I started doing the preliminary research for our trip, where we wanted to go, do, see, etc. and quickly became a little overwhelmed.  Perhaps, a travel agent would actually be useful in this case.  These people are well-traveled.  Been there, done that, know the inside story are full of amazing tips and advice, it is their job, afterall.  Full of optimism for the powers of the agent, I eagerly dialed Avant Travel Agency located in Joseph-Beth.  I told the nice receptionist that I was planning a two-week sojourn to Europe next year and would like to have a little help.  She connected me to an agent and I proceeded over the next half hour to tell her everything I had already decided, gave her a rough outline of the things we would like to do and provided her with the specific details about travel times, traveller needs, etc.  After exhausting myself of every last bit of information I had taken months already to compile, I told her that I would like for her to do some research, come up with a plan and that my mother and I would meet with her in person in two months.  I was being extra nice and giving her plenty of time, it was around the holidays and all so I wanted to give her some slack. 

I called back two months later to make an appointment and took time off work to go and meet with her.  Mom and I had a nice lunch at the Joseph-Beth Cafe and went downstairs to eagerly hear what she had to say.  I couldn’t wait to see all the options she had found, the quaint little B&B nestled in the German countryside, the oh-so-chic flat in Rome, you know, the stuff only a travel agent could find.  She calls us over to her desk and we sit down in front of her, perched eagerly on the end of our seats and I look at her expectantly.

“So, when are your travel dates?” she asks, scribbling on a BLANK piece of paper.

“Uhm, August 24th through September 9th,” I stammer, very confused by this woman.  Did she momentarily forget we had already talked for an hour?

“Do you know which countries you would like to visit?” she questioned, not looking up from her paper.

“I already gave you this information two months ago,” I replied, just starting to get a bit angry.

She smiles with a condescending smile like I was some naive 2 year old that just didn’t understand the workings of a travel agency and said, “Honey, you know how many people call me and give me information?  I would have to go back through a lot of notebooks to find all of that out.”

At this point, I am irate.  She has wasted my time and my mother’s.  We arrived here, expecting her to be prepared and she has done absolutely nothing.  She can’t even find notes from where we spoke before.  Do these people not know how to use a computer?  How hard would it be to just write your notes in Notepad and save them under the client’s name?  Let me tell you, NOT HARD!  I choke back a tirade of insults about her mother and calmy state how disappointed I am that she is not prepared and remind her of what we agreed to on the telephone.  She says nothing of any substance to my polite accusation and instead, gets up to go get us some brochures. 

I don’t know what to do now.  Mom and I have set aside time to meet with this woman and we are already here…  I decide to wait it out a bit more, maybe she can get us a good plane fare at least.  She returns to her seat and I tell her the most important thing right now is to book the plane flights.  She agrees and starts tapping furiously on the computer that she obviously can’t use to take notes.  She comes back at me with a price that is significantly more expensive than what I found on my own on Delta.com.  How could this be?  The one way I thought this crazy woman could be useful, and she is not.  I point out the discrepancy in price and she babbles at me about fees and the time of day, etc.   I’ve decided now that she is not now and never will be useful to me.  This woman hasn’t even been to Europe!  How does she expect to help me plan a trip there? 

We chatted with her for a bit longer and she pretended to be eager to help us.  She promised to do some more research on plane fares and to get back to me the next day.  I give her my cell phone number and my email and stress one more time before we leave how I want to buy the tickets before the end of the week.  She agrees with my statement wholeheartedly and says her goodbye.  Shockingly, she didn’t email or call the next day or the next or the next or the next…

I bought our plane tickets on my own and figured out a way to compile all of our miles and to get my Mom’s ticket for “free”.  I think I will act as my own travel agent from now on, I can pay myself a percentage of the cost for a European vacation and buy myself a really nice cuckoo clock.

1. We are Americans, we can’t go two weeks without using up a nice supply of gasoline.
2. We are Americans, we pack a lot of crap to travel across the ocean.  They just don’t have any stores over there and heaven forbid that I get caught without my favorite brand of shampoo.
3. The toddler factor.  On a train, we have to worry about her screams waking up the disgruntled Frenchman next to us.  The French always seem disgruntled to me.  If we drive, we can travel on our schedule and just turn the radio up loudly to drown out the incessant pleas for juice and Goldfish crackers. 
4. We can see more scenery that way.  We chose to drive around Ireland the last time we went to Europe and just being in the car watching the countryside go by was one of the best parts of the trip.  We stopped at a lot of little places along the way that otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to on a train or in a plane. 

By tracing an imaginary route from Amsterdam to Switzerland, I looked to see what was along the way.  About 4 to 5 hours from Amsterdam was a city called Heidelberg.  I liked the name, sounds pretty German to me.  I looked it up in my handy-dandy Eyewitness travel guide and noticed that it was a college town with a castle.  Excellent!  Our schedule also happened to accomodate the biggest fireworks display of the year over the castle.  We’ve got to see that. 

Deciding where to stay within Heidelberg was the next question.  I am finding that a lot of cities in Europe have “old towns” and that is where a lot of the quintissential charm hides out.  Heidelberg is mostly a walking town so I wanted to position us close to the old town section and preferably near the river.  Why near the river, I don’t know, it just seemed like a good idea.  Since Mom would be with us at that point I was interested in finding a “hotel” that had family rooms.  It’s a cheaper way to go than getting two different rooms while at the same time, providing some much needed privacy.  I went back and forth for months between various hotels, reading a gazillion reviews online and sending numerous emails to the establishments.  I finally settled on the Hotel Hollaender Hof.  It had the location, room style and price that appealed to me and they had availability.   Now, on to Switzerland…

No, we aren’t crazy.  Yes, we are taking a two and a half year old to Europe for two weeks.  As I blog about the preparations for the trip and the trip itself, I will be sure to include lots of tips and lessons learned in regards to traveling abroad with a toddler.  I will also appreciate any useful advice fellow crazy travelers might have about entertaining aforementioned toddler on a 10 hour plane trip.  We just returned from Anaheim, CA a few weeks ago and the stretch of almost 5 hours had us sickly begging for the plane to crash so we would be put out of our misery!  We obviously didn’t learn from that experience so we will be getting on that plane in CVG dumbly thinking this time will be different.  Ah, selective memory, I love you.