…I will be in Belgium for the events surrounding the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo! I bought my tickets for the reenactment yesterday, as soon as I heard they were available.
I’ve been planning this trip for over ten years, saving money and vacation time so I can take at least four weeks off work. The current plan is to fly into London so we can give our daughter, who’ll be 11 and just finished with 5th grade then, a soft, English-speaking landing for her first trip abroad. She’s such a huge Doctor Who fan that London should seem familiar to her.
Then it’s on to Belgium for the reenactment. From there our tentative itinerary is several days in Paris, followed by almost a week in the Dordogne River valley (for delicious food, prehistoric cave paintings, and some nice relaxation in the middle of what will surely be a hectic trip). After that I’ll put my Wellington fangirl hat back on as we go into Spain and Portugal, where we’ll visit at least a few Peninsular War sites.
Is anyone else going to be at the reenactment? And do you have a “trip of a lifetime,” either in your past or planned for your future?
This sounds like a fantastic, drool-worthy trip. I’m going to Kauai next January, but it’s not the same at all.
One of these days I’ll make it to Hawaii. I live in Seattle, and while you couldn’t say it’s close, exactly, I know a lot of people who go every few years.
Victoria and I did the Waterloo Tour and Battle reenactment back in 2010. Almost your same itinerary – London, Belgium and Paris. Visited the British and French camps pre-Battle, Hougemont, La Belle Alliance, Wellington’s Headquarters and then climbed the Lion’s Mound, in the pouring rain, to watch the Battle. Literally hoards of people and crowds and that wasn’t even the 200th! I’d been looking forward to that for years, as well, so I know your anticipation. You’ll have a smashing time!
I told my current employers when they hired me back in 2011 that I’d be taking at least a month off in 2015! Fortunately there’s precedent for that kind of thing on my team, though in most cases my coworkers are visiting family abroad rather than history.
Susanna, I’m excited for you as well as a bit jealous! It sounds like a fabulous trip. But I think I’m most excited for your daughter. She is just at an age when this trip will be indelibly imprinted in her memory forever. My most memorable trip was taken at age 11. It was a 3-week tour to the western U.S. national parks, then across the desert to California, where we went to Disneyland, then drove up the coast to Carmel and San Francisco, even saw the giant sequioas. Ensured my love for traveling for life!!
I hope she enjoys it. When I was about her age, maybe a year of two older, I made my parents’ lives miserable on a spring break vacation because I’d wanted to go on a school trip to Washington DC instead, and my parents thought I was still too young and could do that the next year. I distinctly remember my mom saying, “I hope someday you have a daughter JUST LIKE YOU,” and when I noticed how old Miss Fraser will be for this trip, I felt the weight of that curse!
Mortally jealous here! Actually I want to plan a trip to be there for the bicentennial, but there are many factors that must fall into place for that to happen. I have to keep working and see what happens. Any trip to England would be the trip of a lifetime for me. I haven’t been since I was 22 years old and that trip was only for a few weeks. I want to return and spend at least a month with one day set aside to visit the village in Suffolk where we lived for three years.
Fingers crossed that it works out for you to go! I lived in England for a year (my husband and I actually met there, as part of a program that placed young adults from around the EU, Canada, and the US in various nonprofits), and I went to Ireland for a week at the end of my term, but this will be my first trip to the Continent itself.
That sounds amazing. I’m very impressed by your forward planning.
Susanna! What a trip of a lifetime!!
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