Why day zero you ask? Well, because all trips starts before the trip. One could argue it started years in advance, while others would say it started at the airport, as we boarded the plane to Amsterdam. We’d say it started 21 days before, when we decided we’d take the whole family.
Like all travel, it is EXPENSIVE. Very expensive. At first, it was just going to be boy and dad. That would have, in theory, saved us half the cost. Our reason for our trip to Spain was an event taking place Monday to Wednesday. If the boy and dad came, then we’d arrive Thursday the week before and fly back on Thursday after the event.
That felt rushed and odd. We are a small family of 4, and as such we always travel together, so we decided to increase the cost by 2x and take the plunge. In the process, we also decided to make it a mini-vacation.
We’d still arrived on Thursday, but this time we decided to leave on Sunday morning.
Purchasing the tickets was a scary thing because suddenly we had a “good amount” of saving in the bank, and then, with the click of a button, it was GONE.
Another “decision” was to travel light. For this event, we required one whole suitcase, in addition to anything else. We needed to rent a car, and cars, as we’d heard, were very small in Europe. So the decision was to bring only enough clothes for 5 day, and do a wash over there.
Last, but not least, we decided to book our stay near Barcelona until our event. At which point, we’d find a place closer to the event (about 2 hours west of Barcelona) and stay there until the event was over.
So that’s how our trip started. Many decisions and we still hadn’t even boarded the plane.