Baby AF Goes to Europe

After a two year haitus while Mrs. Done by Forty was pregnant and, then, while she was somehow finishing her PhD dissertation and dealing with all the stresses of Baby AF's first year of life, we are finally taking another international trip next month. And this time, Baby AF is along for the ride.

With apologies to our fellow travelers who will have to deal with some crying and constant complaints to crawl/walk down the aisles of the plane, we're sucking it up and making it happen.

So I figured I'd dust off one of my favorite posts to write: a summary of the trip we're taking, and how we're trying to keep the costs down using some points.

We'll be staying in five cities in three countries over twenty three days: going from Paris, to Nice, to Lyon, to Geneva, and ending the trip in Munich for Oktoberfest, if only to get Baby AF into lederhosen. Depending on how well Baby AF naps in a carrier or in the stroller, we'd like to take some day trips as well.

Unlike our normal trips where I maniacally plan out activities for each day (thanks to the Visit a City app), we're going to try to be more flexible this time around. We'll see how that goes.

As for the flight, we opted to not bring a car seat and instead go with the CARES harness that loops around the back of the seat, and operates a bit like a forward facing car seat. We're not entirely sure how much we'll use it, but it's small enough to stuff in a backpack if we don't want to use it for a bit: one of us can hold Baby AF while the other stretches out on the extra seat.

And one thing is for certain, we didn't want to lug a car seat around to five different cities.

Once we land, we'll be relying on public transportation instead of Ubers and cabs. We're planning on bringing the stroller, one big hiking backpack for all our stuff (packing light), and a pack and play for Baby AF to sleep in. We did a dry pack on Sunday and here's our set up for how we'll get from the metro station to the AirBNBs:

Yes, this voids the warranty.

We've got the pack and play in the bottom of the stroller, and the pack strapped up top. An odd set up for sure, but my thought is that I'd rather trudge the final mile or two with Baby AF in a carrier on my back than that heavy ass backpack.

Thankfully we'll only have this weird set up on days that we're traveling to a new city.

So that covers all the logistics of how we'll hopefully transport our stuff and our progeny from place to place. Let's sum up the costs of all the various parts of the trip.

The airfare: 180,000 American Airline miles & $317 in taxes.

We're flying in to Paris, taking trains between each city, and then finally flying out of Munich. I think the travel hackers call this an open jaw flight. We have two flights going in each direction, thankfully with short layovers: there are just so few options going direct to Europe from Phoenix, so this is typically as good as it gets for us.

The costs are a bit higher than normal because we bought a seat for Baby AF, and because Germany has a costly departure tax that is based on the length of the flight leaving Germany, which accounts for the majority of the dollars we paid.

AirBNBs for 3 nights in Paris, four nights in Nice and five nights in Geneva: 12 nights, $1,219 gross, but only $109 net cost after applying $1,110 in cash back bonuses from two Savor cards.

On all our prior trips, we'd just pay for AirBNBs out of pocket and figure we were still coming out ahead because we were also getting some free hotel nights and free airfare. So if we, gasp, had to use some dollars, what's the big deal? But with our balooning 2018 budget, I figured we'd use our travel hacking skills to try to needle this down a bit, too.

Hotels in Lyon & Munich: ten nights, 240,000 Marriott points & $42 in taxes/fees.

This ended up being a whole mess of Mariott/Bonvoy points (with inflated room costs in Munich due to Oktoberfest) but I suppose that's what we got the points for in the first place. And, at least by our standards, the two hotels are fancy. Like, Westin fancy. (We may be the people who lie on the Westin bed and then talk about buying the Westin bed.)

Trains between cities: $535

This is the one area where we didn't use points to our advantage at all. I'd mistakenly thought the trains would be cheaper when researching on seat61.com (a fantastic resource for train travel but quite optimistic on prices). There are only four train segments but they really added up quickly. Anyway, if we had it to do over again I'd try to use something like Capital One Venture miles to reimburse this cost. We're talking about taking Baby AF on another trip abroad next year, so maybe we'll do it better the next time around.

Net dollars for the trip: $1,003

This obviously doesn't include things like meals, public transit, and activities. But I've never been one to get too into the weeds on that stuff because we'd be spending a lot of that money at home, anyway. I figure we were going to eat and have transit costs and do stuff back home, too, even if a good bit more cheaply than we'll be able to do on vacation. Maybe if I'm feeling bored after the trip I can come back and edit the post with the final costs of the trip.

But maybe not.

As far as the blog while we're away, the three of you readers need not worry: I bought a little bluetooth keyboard that works with my phone, so you can continue to get your fix of liberal guilt posts every Monday.

As always, thanks for reading.

*Photo is from zoetnet at Flickr Creative Commons.
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