So, I mentioned before that I would share our short-term plans. Here’s what we know with links to our destinations.
We’ve been in Annecy for about 2 months now. We couldn’t have asked for a better place to start. The town is old and cool, very safe, easy to navigate, has lots to do, and many nice people. We’ll be here for about another 12 hours and are then heading up to visit a Gustavus friend of mine who lives outside of Paris. We’ll be there for two nights and are hoping to visit Versailles.
We then leave from Paris-Orly to fly up to Finland and visit some family friends in Turku.
In Turku we’ll get a full tour from our native friends and we plan to watch the top Finnish hockey franchise play. Turku is the hometown for many NHL players, including the Wild’s own Mikko Koivu. We’ve also been invited to Fathers’ Day dinner where we’ll get to enjoy the whole family and some Finnish food.
From Finland, we’ll then go to the UK for a month or more. We’ll spend the first week in Hastings, UK in the south of England on the sea.
Oh, and we rented a car for the first few weeks in the UK. I’ll be driving from the right-hand seat, and Jody will be panicking in the left seat.
And so ends the plan.
From Hastings, we’ll travel in England, perhaps Wales, maybe Scotland, possibly Northern Ireland, maybe Ireland, maybe Albania…who knows?
Question from a mythical reader: So, you all loved Annecy, your kids speak French, you aren’t working anyway, why are you going to the UK?
Answer from the real me: True, I have been unemployed for about a month and am SUPER good at not working. I’m looking for something in Europe that will get me a work permit and us a residency visa, but not much shaking out.
We can only stay 90 out of 180 days in the Schengen countries on our tourist visa. When we leave and go to the UK (which are not in the Schengen countries), the clock stops counting on our tourist visa days.
So, We’ll get to travel, speak English, drink great pints in pubs, eat bangers and mash, and we’ll still have days left on our first tourist visa for France, Switzerland, Germany, etc.
That’s the plan.
Published by