Walking Shoes and Euros - Musings and Fun Facts About Our Europe Trip

When packing carry-on, you really have to focus on your shoes! I can't emphasize function over fashion enough! No one will care that you are wearing athletic shoes with your dress, you see it everywhere...from tourists to locals. These folks walk a lot, and they know how important comfortable shoes are!

For perspective, we walked an average of 5.67 miles per day (yes, I did the math)! Much of that was on cobblestone streets. You better have some comfy, broken in, shoes to keep your feet happy!

Scott wore one pair of shoes the entire trip. I brought two...one pair of sneakers and one pair of black Tevas. I wore the Tevas with dresses or on shorter walking days, and the sneakers most other times.

Our shortest walking day was 2.5 miles (when we were on trains, planes and boats traveling from Sorrento to Venice) and our longest was 8.7 miles (in Rome).

The week before the trip, I walked 4 miles a day in the sneakers I was going to bring. My feet were a little sore in one spot, so I bought some cushy inserts with arch supports and used them in the shoes. It was great and my feet were comfy the whole trip.

I would recommend getting at least some Euros from your bank before you go. You can, of course, get euros at ATM machines over there, and I did that once when I was running low. How much you get in advance depends on your preference for using cash rather than cards. Regardless, you will need some cash for tips, local hotel taxes, to pay cab drivers, buy small items, etc. I personally like having cash when I travel (and take steps to properly safeguard it).

When you order money from the bank, they'll ask if you want small bills, large bills or a variety. I went with a variety, but next time will do small bills! It was hard to find stores that would happily break a large bill (and we had too many of those). Small bills is better!

Every hotel we stayed in had a breakfast included. Lunches and dinners were on our own and we ate out almost every meal (no, I haven't gotten on a scale yet...not ready for that)! We could have saved money by picnic lunching and buying bottles of wine at the store...but this itinerary didn't lend itself to that very well. Plus, meal time is a social occurrence in Italy. It was fun to be at the cafes and restaraunts, eating at the street side tables and people watching!

So include meals and the other items I mentioned above in your budgeting for your trip. Dinners, with alcohol, for us averaged about 65 euros. If we hadn't had so many drinks, it would have been much cheaper!!