The vacation plans are for the most part set. Unlike our previous trips to Europe, this one is fairly tightly scheduled. This is partly due to the fact that there will be three couples going (myself, my brother and my father) so trying to find a hotel on the fly with that number of people can be a challenge.
The vacation plan started off with certain specific objectives, in particular to visit my father’s home town, Sonneberg. After that the planning involved consideration of a number of locations, but in the end we chose to spend the first few days in Sonneberg and then spend the remainder of the first week on the Rhine. After the first week our plans were to split up; my brother returning home; and my father visiting his cousin in Berchtesgaden; Linda and I travelling west to Bruges Belgium.
The details were resolved using Google Earth which turns out to be a great vacation planning tool. Google Earth provides four tools: directions (plotting the course from A to B with approximate travel time); photographs (uploaded by other people); World Heritage Sites; and hotel bookings.
First, I plotted the route through the desired locations. With a principle of trying not to drive more than 2-3 hours per day, I could locate places where we would spend the night. Google Earth allows people to upload pictures, so I could look at the pictures of the location and if they looked interesting, I would then look for hotels in the area. Again, Google Earth plots the locations of hotels in the area. Click on a hotel and up comes a short description and a link to a web page to bookings.com. Bookings.com provides a more detailed description of the hotel, customer ratings and of course, on-line booking.
World Heritage sites allowed me to adjust the route to visit sites of interest along the way.
UPDATE:
Index of entries related to the trip:
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