Toronto to Columbus
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2006
1
17
Trip End
Sep 17, 2006
Toronto,
Canada
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Here are some ideas that we have picked up on our travels abroad:
Spend less time in the cities and more time in the mountains. When we go back we will
spend much more time in the Interlacken area hiking the Alps. We feel we needed
more time in the beautiful town of Chamonix, France.
Everything is expensive in Switzerland, in three days we spent 300 Swiss Francs on
food and our breakfast was included with our hotel. We suggest going to a store/deli,
purchasing fresh bread, meat and cheese for sandwiches. The dairy is fresh from the
local farms in these delis. This will save a lot of money, it will cost you 6 bucks a meal
for two people instead of 40 - 60 bucks.
Gas is expensive, plan your routes wisely and bring a GPS. The roads signs in Europe
are not user friendly.
Buy the Swiss half price card and you can ride all the lift, rails and buses for half the
price. This saved us money.
Rent an auto that has a Turbo Diesel, it will save you in the mountains and in fuel
mileage.
Most importantly, never ever, under any circumstances travel on Air Canada. They
have horrible customer service (very rude to us) and their planes are behind on current
overseas accommodations (televisions in each headrest and more leg room). Fly out of
the U.S. using a U.S. based company, they will respond better to FAA rule 240. When
you have connections outside of the U.S. you will have to go through customs with
each connection and this is a pain.
Stay out of Italy because the traffic is horrible and the tolls are outrageous. There were
some beautiful places to see but you must stay off the main roads. Do not take the
tunnel from France to Italy, it will cost you 31.90 Euros (about 40 U.S.dollars). Stay off
the highways the tolls will cost you another 38 Euros from the French border to Milan,
Italy.
We can tell you about the trails to hike and the most scenic hotels. We really enjoyed ourselves and already miss the mountains (but not the Opel).
If you have any questions, please contact Becky at Becsher@yahoo.com or Kevin at Kaalred@yahoo.com.
