[The following post is from the archives of my In Search Of Incredible blog, originally published on 15 March 2015]

I certainly did not plan on visiting Europe twice within a year, but this trip had been a long time coming. I’ve talked about taking a vacation to Europe with my parents for many years now. They have actually been to Europe before, something like 30 years ago, when I was still an infant. Back then, they travelled across almost all of Europe by bus, where one man stuck with them throughout the trip, acting as their bus driver, porter and tour guide all in one.

I have seen the photographs my parents took back then and I believe that was where my love for travel and desire to see all those famous sights with my own eyes came from. 30 years on, they would be revisiting some of the places, and also exploring some other new places that they’ve never been before.

For this trip, we decided to go free-and-easy, because I don’t like packaged tour groups, and my parents know this. I think they also have confidence in my planning skills after seeing me do several free-and-easy trips on my own. This would be the longest trip they have ever done free-and-easy, so there was some pressure on me to come up with an itinerary that would be suitable and enjoyable. But then again, I love researching and planning trips, so it was hardly a chore.

In deciding which countries to cover, I knew I definitely wanted to visit Italy as there were many attractions I wanted to see, like the Colosseum, Leaning Tower of Pisa, and places like Vatican City and Venice. My mum also highly recommended Switzerland and I was keen to visit it too. I initially planned a longer stay in Switzerland, but decided to cut it short and squeeze in Paris instead, because dad seemed really keen to revisit Paris. I was there in 2009 and I loved it, so I didn’t mind going back again. So the countries were pretty much set – Italy, Switzerland and France (Paris).

For the choice of airline, I checked all the usual suspects and the cheapest one turned out to be Qatar Airways, with a return ticket costing S$1,226.80. There was a transit at Doha but it was ok. The timing of the flight was quite good, so I didn’t have any major issues. This would be my first time flying with Qatar Airways. I have previously flown with Emirates and it was good, so I expect Qatar Airways to be just as good, since it is a Middle Eastern carrier. We booked an open-jaw ticket, with the outbound trip to Rome and the inbound trip from Paris.

For all the travelling between cities, we commuted via trains, which were more comfortable and convenient than taking airplanes. Trains were great because you didn’t have to check in two hours before departure, and the train stations were all centrally located within the city itself, so you didn’t have to spend much time or money travelling too far to get to the city and the accommodation. The seats are much more spacious and the trains are so quiet and stable you can barely feel them moving. Best of all, the scenery during the journey is almost always superb. On a plane, you can see nothing but clouds. Lastly, trains are much more environmentally friendly than planes because they run on electricity and they transport more people at a time.

The train tickets didn’t come cheap though. As we were only travelling between three countries, it didn’t make sense to get a Eurail pass, which is more value for money if you’re travelling to many cities in Europe. So we opted to purchase the train tickets for each stop individually. For example, a ticket from Rome to Florence costs 29 Euros for a 1.5-hour ride. The most expensive train ticket was between Zürich and Paris, costing 65 Euros for a 4-hour ride.

As for accommodation, I decided to try out Airbnb after my friend recommended it to me. Basically, Airbnb is a platform that connects renters and rentees, i.e. People who have apartments available for rent and people seeking apartments to rent. You can input certain parameters when you search, for example, the city, the dates, the number of people, your budget, whether you would like to rent a room or an entire apartment, or whether you want ‘real beds’ or whether it contains certain amenities like Wi-Fi.

There is a mobile app version but the website version is much better because you can view the map of the area and as you zoom in and drag across the map, all the available listings will show up. It is really easy to use and I had a great time looking at the pictures of the apartments. Many of them were so pretty I felt like I should book them just so I can stay in them. If you spot something you like, you can message the owner to enquire about the availability or any questions you might have, and they will usually get back to you very quickly. You can also check out reviews left by other people who have rented the apartment, to see if what is being advertised is true.

For this trip, we stayed at Airbnb apartments for all the stops except for Lucerne and Zürich, where there weren’t many Airbnb options available. For the 12 nights where we stayed at Airbnb apartments, the average cost per person per night was S$81.34, after converting from Euros or Swiss Francs to Singapore Dollars. I would say that is pretty reasonable for European accommodation.

With all the planning done, we embarked on our trip on 25 October 2014, Saturday. First stop, Roma!