Here are some tips for any other travellers to Europe or just some odd things that I wanted to capture so I remember:
1. Know how many days to pack for (Dustin miscalculated that we would be gone 10 days instead of 16, so realized on about Day 8 that he was nearly out of clothes). So we bought some socks and just had to do some laundry!
2. The Garmin was a HUGE help-- if you are driving in Europe, do not attempt it without GPS. The road names are way too hard to pronounce, half of the time the road has 5 different names so the one on the street sign may not match your directions. It was even helpful walking around at times to try and locate an ATM, train station, etc.
3. If you are not an adventurous eater (like myself), ask before being seated at a restaurant if they have an english version. Once or twice we got up and left (After we had sat down) cause they did not have english and we couldn't make out anything.
4. Always have a good chunk of cash on you. Many places will take credit cards, but we had numerous instances where they didn't take it if less than $30, which was some of our meals or purchases. Also, because most US credit cards do not have this chip in them, many machines did not like our cards.
5. And sometimes in restaurants, they took credit cards, but once they saw Dustin had plenty of cash on him then they'd change their mind and say no, we want that cash. So then we learned to not pull out his money clip when we went to pay!
6. Water is expensive and scarce....our water bottle we brought from home was a lifesaver! We filled that up every day and was so nice to have with us as we walked around all day.
7. In France, definitely look on the menu or ask for their house wine by the carafe. It is waaaay cheaper and tasted fine. Sometimes it was hard to find on the menu, or wouldn't be on the menu and then we'd see a random sign hanging up after we had ordered.
8. The prices on a menu already include taxes and tip (unless you want to give a little extra for great service- which was hard to come by). So a meal may look fairly expensive at first, but once you get the bill at the end of the night it really was the same or cheaper than a US meal since it already accounted for that.
9. When finished with your meal, you must ask the server for your bill when ready. I think they'd let you sit there for days if you don't ask!
10. We had brought a lot of US cash with us-- our debit cards worked fine and it was MUCH easier to withdraw money that way. We only exchanged cash 1 time because the other times it was a pain to find a bank that was open and that didn't have an absurd fee.
11. TONS of people smoke and since smoking was banned indoors at restaurants, it was impossible to ever sit outside and have a nice meal because the tables are really close together and at least 6 of your nearest neighbors will be puffing away.
12. Rick Steves book was a lifesaver and HUGE help-- my biggest advice is to definitely use him for Paris and areas he has quite a bit of info for. We used it for all sorts of reference- what metro tickets do we buy? what restaurants are good in the area? what place is good for some drinks? do we tip here? what are the hours of such-and-such?
12a. My one recommendation to others using Rick Steves is that we sometimes found his maps or directions a little difficult to follow on his walks. The maps he provides just show main streets and not all the sidestreets. So I'd recommend taking the map you are using for that city (that hopefully is more detailed), highlight the route or sites on that map and use it.
13. For some trains, you need your ticket when you exit....even though you used it to go through a turny-thing to board the train with it. I had to search for 5 minutes through my pockets and purse to find what I did with mine the first time!
14. Interesting tidbit we learned-- when people rent apartments in Europe they take EVERYTHING when they move out, including all light fixtures, appliances, the sink, closet racks, etc.
In a nutshell, that sums up my overall recommendations or info we learned! I'll leave you with this pic of our cute little rental- the mini cooper convertible, which we were too stupid to ever figure out how to get the roof down :(
