Thinking Allowed: Binge Booking

Soon you will hopefully get to hear all about our experiences hiking in the Alps as a family. For now though, I thought it might be fun (or dull) to get a glimpse of all the work and planning that takes place behind the scenes to make things smoother sailing when they happen. I have been spending much of my free time in Turkey researching maps and booking accommodation for the next leg of our adventure - the Alpe Adria trail. We chose this trail as it offers both beauty and challenge while also having enough towns that we don't have to camp along the way. Except- I hadn't expected how slow and involved the process of booking accommodation along the trail would be for our family of six. First off I needed to really get to know the trail and decide how I would rework the stages to best suit our family before booking anything. For example, there are a couple of high mountain sections that I rerouted as they seemed like too much of a challenge. We intentionally chose to begin the trail early in the season to avoid crowds and accommodation availability. Of course in doing so we also face the reverse issue as at the start of the trip there are many accommodations that have not yet opened for the season. I very quickly learned that the cost of staying in the Alps for a family of six can be very high and that many places dont have space to accomodate a family. For example, though I adore mountain huts, the per person rate makes them costly so I have worked a few out of the plans. To mitigate cost and family size factors I have looked at all the options and played around with trail routes and stages to take advantage of any places better suited to our family. Incredibly finding all the accommodations in an area involves multiple websites. Searching accommodation on google maps turns out to offer the most complete list. The other thing that makes this process so incredibly slow, aside from the fact that it is about 40 separate accommodations, is the booking practice. For whatever reason the region has remained relatively old fashioned in its booking process. When there isn't online booking it means you have to email and start a discussion that generally takes days to culminate in a booking. Trickier still you have to keep track of the multiple discussion your are having. Some places only have a phone number listed so you have to phone until you hopefully reach a person who can hopefully understand some English. I know that not long ago this is how travel was and so all I can say is that I am very thankful for the invention of online booking. Not sure I will make a hobby of the sports of binge booking...

Stay posted to see if it actually all works out smoothly (it wont) and if it was all worth it (hopefully it is).

In cheerier news we now have a 14 year old. I came up with all sorts of things we could do on her birthday but in the end she decided that what would be best is if we didn't take any cars, any buses, any boats, any planes, any train and we just had a quiet relaxing day as a family. It was very nice and we all felt pleased that she wanted to be with us. In line with her requests I figure adding this small paragraph at the end of a slightly boring post is in line with her wishes. Most of the gifts we got her were things we found on the ground which she was very happy about. We all also discovered that a Greek style chocolate cake (think very moist and chocolate syrupy) just might be better than my usual birthday chocolate cake. Happy birthday Aurora! If you read this one day know that at fourteen we think you are pretty great and the best company we could ever hope for.