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The planning for this trip began one year ago. Last year my sister was boarding a plane to Italy to watch her son
race in the world mountain marathon races in Venice. She was boarding the plane as the world trade center was
being attacked. She never got to Venice that year, so the idea was born that I would go with her next year. This
year her son was running in Austria, and that is how we came by our basic itinerary. There is a nice contrast
between Austria and Italy, making this an extra treat for my first time abroad.
Our expedition went from two to four. My daughter and grandson could go too. Each of us contributed some
ideas to make up the planning section of our trip. The planning was almost as much fun as the trip. I used the internet
extensively to find out more about Austria and Italy, as well as my local library.
We did our own research into the areas we were going, bought books on german and italian translations,
and watched travel videos of the area. I borrowed two from the library on Venice, none on Innsbruck. The one with the
most useful information was Rick Steve's Venice. You can access his webpage here.
I was the airplane ticket point person since I had experience with priceline. Our tickets were about 780 dollars with airport taxes. I offered 700 dollars and it
was accepted right away. I don't advocate only trying one service though, sometimes you can find a better deal at Travelocity.com, or at Expedia.com. Our itinerary was beginning to take shape. We would be flying into Marco Polo airport in Venice.
Only one change of planes at JFK international airport in New York. We would stay one night in Venice,
take a train to Innsbruck,( 5 hours) for the roughly 4 days of races and than come back to Venice to finish out our vacation.
Our plane was full, so we were able to do
a deal and got bumped up to first class with an extra change of planes in Paris from JFK. This is an 8 hour flight
from the U.S. East Coast to Europe, so it was a relief to have the extra room in the first class (business class) cabin.
I found that figuring the difference between the Dollar and the Euro much easier, since Europe is working on changing it's currency to the Euro,
before this it would have been Lira in Italy, and Marks in Austria. We were lucky here too since the Euro and Dollar were very close at the time of our travels.
One Australian I talked to said it was 2:1 for them....OUCH!! You can access
a currency converter here We stayed in a hotel
in Igles, Austria, about 20 minutes from Innsbruck, a picture postcard village, nestled against some of the most beautiful
mountains I have seen.
Because our length of stay in Venice was longer and we wanted to experience
Venice more from the venetian view, we rented an apartment for 8 days. Lugging suitcases up 3 flights of stairs was interesting too.
We had 8 or 9 suitcases between the four of us. This also was a less expensive way to go, and we did have more privacy, our own kitchen,
bathroom, and a terrace on the roof plus 3 separate bedrooms for less than 650 Euro.
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The rest of my party lives in the Phoenix area, so we met there. It took me two short hops of about 2 hours each going to Dallas and than on to Phoenix which is probably why I was on such a small Jet. I had a window seat and row to myself since it was the only seat in the row! The trip to Phoenix was very smooth, size does not always matter. (hope I remembered my ruby slippers!)
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