Summer Reading a.k.a. Sucking the Fun Out of Vacation

As you know, RaeRae and I are traveling to Europe just two weeks from Friday. We've been planning this trip since my first transatlantic adventure in 1997, when I brought her a French Cinderella storybook (she was 4) as a souvenir. Inside the front cover, I wrote, "Someday, we'll travel the world together." She never let me forget that vague promise, and for the better part of a decade, we've been planning our own European adventure.

It only took eight days of teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing to finagle a cheap enough way to fly us there. FYI, I used 45,000 Delta SkyMiles to save $450 off Rachel's itinerary, and I used $339 in vouchers for mine. Total cost: Less than $700 for two roundtrip flights to Europe. Boo-yah! Take that, crummy economic situation! I own you!

As I mentioned yesterday, I've taken on a much grander than usual travel planning effort, and as a result am currently sharing a bed with a dozen guidebooks, novels, maps and plays that will remind me of everything I once learned in AP European History. I just can't accept that my mini-me doesn't give a hoot who conquered which town in 1407. I hope that once we're walking cobblestone streets, she'll suddenly realize her burning desire to know what happened between King Henry & Anne Boleyn. Ever the prepared one, I'll be standing by with the down-and-dirty historical deets.

What I'm reading to get ready:  

• Fodor's London & Paris 
  
• Walks in Hemingway's Paris  
  
• Les Miserables 
  
• Romeo + Juliet  
  
• Vanity Fair 
  
• The Prince + The Pauper 
  
• A Garden in Paris 
  
• Paris Discovered, Explorations in the City of Light 
  
• The Collected Traveler: Paris, an Inspired Anthology & Travel Resource  
  

What RaeRae is reading to get ready:

• Nothing
  
• But she is watching movies like Moulin Rouge, Peter Pan and Ratatouille...
• And she did look at a map to find out where Europe is. So there's that.

Once I have a more secure itinerary, I'll post it here so you fab readers can help with tweaks + suggestions.