6 Week European Road Trip - 2013 “The Reality”

We did it! We took a 6 Week European Road Trip and had a blast. We are now home in Almuñécar, Spain and catching up on laundry and some much-needed rest. Now we will have time to actually write about all the cool things we did. I will provide you with a quick summary here and then over the coming weeks we will share some of the highlights of our Summer Road Trip.

Flashback to 2013:

Just a little reminder of what we set out to accomplish:

Wagoners Abroad Summer Road Trip Europe – 2013 “The Plan”.
We had an open-ended plan and were open to returning home after 2 weeks or extending and just going with the flow. We mapped out a path and almost stuck to it. Below you will see what we actually covered.

Wagoners Abroad Summer Road Trip Europe – 2013 “The Reality”

View Summer 2013 Europe Road Trip in a larger map

Summer Road Trip Europe Summary and Stats

Length
- 43 days exploring Europe
- For those of you scrambling to do the math, that is 6 weeks and 1 day!

Driving
- We drove 7658 km or 4758 miles
- (That is almost from NC to Los Angeles and back!). I have to applaud Alan as he drove 98% of the time!
Countries visited
- Spain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, France and Andorra
Modes of transportation:
- Our car (Citroen Berlingo – All over the map)
- Ferry (Barcelona to Rome)
- City Bus (Venice)
- Gondola (Austria)
- Funicular, Gondola and Cog Wheel Train (Switzerland)
- Train/Metro/Subway (Rome, Toulouse and many of the bigger cities)
- Feet – Our tootie footies got a work out! We walked, hiked, ran and swam.
- Boat (Lake Garda, Italy)
Accommodation
- We stayed in 16 different accommodations around Europe
  - Apartments in 5 different locations
  - Hotels in 4 cities for a total of 6 nights
  - 1 Ferry
  - Mobile Homes at 5 campgrounds
- We packed and unpacked a grand total of 32 times! (including our initial pack and final unpack at home).
Sickness
- Zilch, Nada, Nothing. No one got sick! Can you believe it? After all of the millions of people we were exposed to and public places and we all came out with a clean bill of health. 🙂
Injuries
- I was hiking in my sandals and a stick decided it wanted to pierce my skin just at the cuticle of my big toe. One band-aid and some TLC from Alan and I was right as rain.
Odd smells
- Too many to count while driving along the road. We attribute most of it to farm animals. (I am sure some of them came from within the car too, but no one knows why.)
- Cheese factory (We all had different reactions to this)
- Crossing the bridge, on the bus, to Venice (Ooooh that was a doozy!)
Views while driving
- Endless rolling hills with sunflowers (Northern Italy, Southern France and Northern Spain).
- The Alps – (Italian, Austrian, Swiss and French)
  - All of them were “Ooooh…Ahhh” moments
  - Eiger and Mont Blanc were pretty exciting.
  - Glaciers and snow-capped mountains – (Switzerland and France)
- Quintessential villages and big cities.
Arguments – Just a few sibling spats
Movies
- Every Harry Potter movie was watched too many times to count. The kids would hide under their blankets in the car so there wouldn’t be a glare on their screen.
Gelato and Ice Cream – too many to count, but if you look at our pictures in Italy, gelato was almost a daily routine.
Water time – Lakes, Rivers, Waterfalls and the Sea
Laughs – Countless
Games
- Loads of Solitaire
- Hundreds of games of Speed
- Endless rounds of Black Jack
Memories – Enough to last our lifetime
Experiences –
- Meeting wonderful people, everywhere!
- Super Car – Pagani tour
- Parmegiano-Romano Tour
- Opera in Verona
- Boating on Lake Garda and letting the kids drive!
- Playing in Pisa
- Traditional Balsamic Vinegar Tour
- Seeing dogs in the shopping malls
- Meeting up with Cousins Sandi and Randi in Lake Como
- Falling in love with Cinque Terre
- Walking in Rome
- Meandering Venice
- Being nearly on top of Europe, while hiking in the Swiss Alps
- Seeing Glaciers as blue as can be
- Taking a ferry across the Mediterranean Sea
- Riding the waves on FlowRider in Zaragoza, Spain
- Lunching in Andorra
Cost of the trip – Priceless! Actually we share all of our costs with you. just click on the image below.

So you see, in a nutshell we had a blast! More on our adventures coming soon.

By the way, we love being home too! We live in such a fantastic town in Spain. A popular holiday destination and meeting people from all of Europe here as well. It is like we are on vacation at home!