मेरो फूलबारी

Italy trip was one of the most enjoying trip in our life. We got a lot of experiences, challenges, and the way to handle such difficulties. If you are planning to visit some places yourselves, this information will be useful. Even if you are not planning to visit, you should learn some lessons that we learned. I believe, this would be a useful item for you.

This was my first trip in which we managed everything by ourselves: finding hotels, getting ticket information, booking inter - city trains, listing places to be visited etc. One thing Asian people might notice after Europe trip is the language problem. Needless to say that most of European countries have their own languages and people don't speak English so well. We already had such experience in France. We took this constrain into consideration while we were making our plan.

To breakdown the plan, we divided the tasks into two parts and assign the human resources for each :). I and Prajawalan were assigned to find the best routes, and places to be visited in each cities of Italy. Bharat was assigned for finding cheapest hotels.

Each team completed the assigned tasks within few days. I took some information from Anusha didi. We prepared a good plan for places. As an example, in Milan we listed 4/5 places and we highlighted the satellite map for each of the places and we made a route where to go first and so on. We collected information about transportation system: taxi, train, bus, tram,boat etc. in each of these cities. On the other hand, Bharat completed where to stay with cheapest rate. Of course, we already knew youth hostels were cheaper than hotels. But we wanted cheapest amount the cheaper. Om..., Bharat prepared such list with the help of hostelworld, youth hostel etc. The range of room rent per person per night was from 18-25 EURO. The earlier you book, the cheaper you get. We booked in the middle so price was also medium. Many youth hostels were already packed because it was New year's season. So, we paid relatively high than other seasons. But we were excited therefore we didn't care about 25 € a night which we feel is too expensive wrt our country.

Interesting Mistakes
If you made mistakes, don't worry. Only thing is to know that you realize and don't repeat in future. Sometime mistakes are wonders. Wonders?? Yes, wonders. I'll give you the real example. Have you heard story of Leanning tower of Pisa in Italy? If yes, you know, if not let me give a short story.

Pisa is a tower located in Italy. It was designed by Bonano Pisano, that's why it is named as Pisa. Its height is about 56m (55.7m to 55.86 m) and is tilted by 3.97 degree. Wow, 56 m high and tilted?? and still that exist??? Yes, this is therefore an wonder. But but but it was not designed to make tilted in the beginning. Great architect Pisano didn't think that the foundation is sandy :). He started to build the tower..., later it started to tilt???? hehe.. This was the serious drawback in design, wasn't it? Yup, if there were some checking group (technical teams) they would definitely propose this engineer to send into jail. Hehe.. It didn't happen. Now the bad design is a wonder in the world. I found it as a wonder, too.

Keep in mind that I'm not saying mistakes are good :). I'll describe some of such events which I personally think as mistakes. Lets start with our mistakes. Before that I remind: we were visiting four cities in Italy: Milan, Rome, Pisa, Venice.

a) Prajwalan, from Norway, decided to visit Paris as well as Italy. He decided to come Paris in 27th of December and fly to Milan together with us on 28th December, and come back to Paris on 2nd of Jan , visit some days in Paris, and return back to Norway.
Haha. Come to Paris on 27th night and leave to Milan 28th morning via different airlines (not a transit)..? Who does think this is not a mistake? Why didn't he try directly to Milan??. Simple answer to this question is: mistakes lol. I am pretty sure Prajawalan will never repeat such mistake in his life.

b) Our route was: Paris-Milan-Rome-Pisa-Venice-Milan-Paris. We took plane from Paris to Milan and Milan to Paris, rest by train. Is this plan correct??
Haha. Why did we repeat Milan?? Why didn't we take Plane from Venice to Paris :(. Its one of the mistakes. Its for sure if we take round trip flight from the same airport, it would be cheaper than two separate flights (go and come) from different airports. But we didn't take into account that we have to pay for Venice to Milan, and Milan to Malpansa Airport. We failed finding the shortest and efficient routes in practical field. This won't be an wonder unlike by Pisano. As I mentioned earlier, we realized the mistake :).

We have a lot of interesting events. I will post remaining ones later on.