Monthly RTW Recap: Month 9

This information reflects the ninth month of our round-the-world (RTW) trip October 1-31, 2015:

Countries visited: 4 (Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, France)
RTW trip total: 19

Beds slept in: 8
RTW trip total: 77

Modes of transportation: Trains, buses, bicycles, metro, rental car, airplane

Beaches visited: 2
RTW trip total: 30

National Parks visited: 0
RTW trip total: 16

Things lost/broken/stolen: Nothing that we know of

Books read: Christine 1, Clay 1
RTW trip total: Christine 15, Clay 8

Money spent: $3,551.28 USD or average of $114.56 per day
RTW trip total: $25,753.53 USD or average of $93.99 per day

Times Clay trimmed his beard: 1
RTW trip total: 7

The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France

Favorite thing we did: 

We spent 2 weeks dog sitting a sweet pup high in the French Alps on the Swiss border. It doesn’t sound glamorous or adventurous, but we loved every minute of it. Traveling so fast around Europe was beginning to wear us down and we needed a slower pace. Chatel is a small village that comes alive during the winter as a premier snow skiing destination, but we almost had the place to ourselves during the shoulder season in October. Our new furry friend Ginny was the perfect combination of couch cuddler and trail buddy, which is exactly what we needed. We were sad to leave after our 2 weeks were up, but we are thankful for the much needed relaxation.

Hiking in Chatel, France with our new friend Ginny

Happy Birthday to us!

October is birthday month for the Boothes and we celebrated in Belgium and France this year. Clay turned 32 in Brussels with lots of Belgian waffles, Belgian beer and Belgian chocolate. And my birthday began by hiking over into Switzerland from our quaint little ski village in the Alps and then enjoying more of my favorite things: fancy chocolate and fancy wine.

Celebrating with good friends and good beer

Night walk in Gent, Belgium

BlaBla BLAAHHHHH

While traveling around Europe we started using the ride sharing community BlaBla Car for more cost effective trips between cities. It is like carpooling with strangers for a fee. (Yes, mom it’s safe). We had great success sharing trips with other travelers from Milan, Italy to Lugano, Switzerland and all over Spain (between Madrid-Granada-Cadiar-Seville) for 4 trips total. But then our luck ran out when we needed to travel from Amsterdam to Paris. We booked our 5-hour BlaBla car trip 2 days prior, but the morning of our travel day our driver text us to let us know he was having car trouble. Not a good start to an already long travel day. We waited around for about an hour at the train station (our meeting point) but still no sign of him. Our driver finally text us to tell us he was there (yay!), but when we met him he let us know that his car wouldn’t start, and he couldn’t take it to a mechanic because it was Sunday. So it’s about 9:00am at this point and we are scrambling to figure out how are we going to get to Paris. Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem, but of course we had a rental car and hotel booked/paid for that day so we had to be in Paris by 6:00pm. We tried to find another BlaBla car ride leaving later…no luck. We tried to change our bookings…no luck. Our only options: travel by bus for 48 euro/per person for 8 hour journey or by train for 125 euro/per person for 3 hour journey. We bit the bullet and headed to buy a train ticket. Sold Out. Of course only first class tickets were available for 300 euro each. No thanks. Then we head to the bus station to buy a bus ticket that will get us to Paris by 10pm, which doesn’t help us at all. In the end we finally left Amsterdam around 1pm  and had to eat the cost of our pre-booked car rental and hotel booking. This was probably the worst travel day we have had in the past 9 months since absolutely nothing would work for us!

The Canals of Amsterdam, Netherlands

Road tripping:

We needed a rental car for our dog sitting job in Chatel, so we took advantage of the transportation freedom and turned it into a road trip. We traveled all the way to Brittany to see historic beaches, explore quaint villages, drink cider, and eat kouign-amann. The Brittany region is so different from the rest of France from the people to the food and we are so happy we took the time to experience it.

Taking advantage of low tide in Saint Malo, France

Kouign amann in Bretagne

Check out our previous recaps from Month 1, Month 2, Month 3, Month 4, Month 5, Month 6, Month 7 and Month 8.