Introduction to my 2006 trip

My name is Kyla Gurganus, and I am a high school science teacher in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Each summer since I started teaching, I have taken a big trip. This year, I travelled to Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, England, and Scotland, culminating in a trip to see the tennis at Wimbledon. I hope you will enjoy the pictures and notes from my trip. This page just talks about my travel planning and packing; for the pictures, go back to the main page and click on a destination.

I start planning my trips more than a year in advance. I start by reading travel guidebooks and dreaming/listing where I would like to go. My favorite guidebooks are those by Rick Steves and Let's Go, both updated annually. Both guidebooks cover most of the same places, allowing me to combine them with web sites for the most up-to-date, complete information I can get without already having visited. I read the 2005 versions of both books on Eastern Europe and then bought (and read) the 2006 versions. It was odd to note the changes made in only one year: Rick Steves added a section on Trogir, while Let's Go dropped its lengthy section on Trogir!

I bought my plane ticket in February 2006 to get a good price; I used a travel agent for the trans-Atlantic flight (in a Northwest World Vacations package including my London hotel) and the flights to Croatia and from Hungary. I bought my train and plane tickets in England and Scotland over the Internet on my own in April and early June. While the Internet purchases were not quite as easy as I expected (British web sites don't usually accept US addresses), they were quite cheap.

Bus and train schedules are available on the Internet. In Croatia, some of the web sites are only available in Croatian and are hard to use, but with enough patience and practice, you'd be surprised how much you can get out of them!

Hello!
My name is Kyla Gurganus, and I am a high school science teacher in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Each summer since I started teaching, I have taken a big trip. This year, I travelled to Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, England, and Scotland, culminating in a trip to see the tennis at Wimbledon. I hope you will enjoy the pictures and notes from my trip. This page just talks about my travel planning and packing; for the pictures, go back to the main page and click on a destination. I start planning my trips more than a year in advance. I start by reading travel guidebooks and dreaming/listing where I would like to go. My favorite guidebooks are those by Rick Steves and Let's Go, both updated annually. Both guidebooks cover most of the same places, allowing me to combine them with web sites for the most up-to-date, complete information I can get without already having visited. I read the 2005 versions of both books on Eastern Europe and then bought (and read) the 2006 versions. It was odd to note the changes made in only one year: Rick Steves added a section on Trogir, while Let's Go dropped its lengthy section on Trogir! I bought my plane ticket in February 2006 to get a good price; I used a travel agent for the trans-Atlantic flight (in a Northwest World Vacations package including my London hotel) and the flights to Croatia and from Hungary. I bought my train and plane tickets in England and Scotland over the Internet on my own in April and early June. While the Internet purchases were not quite as easy as I expected (British web sites don't usually accept US addresses), they were quite cheap. Bus and train schedules are available on the Internet. In Croatia, some of the web sites are only available in Croatian and are hard to use, but with enough patience and practice, you'd be surprised how much you can get out of them!
There are a few things I wish I had brought with me this trip: a pair of water shoes (for walking on rocky beaches), a bathing suit cover-up, an electric fan (for all the places I stayed with no A/C or fans; I ended up buying one!), Crystal Light singles (to add to bottles of water instead of buying pop), and a bed sheet (as only two of the places I stayed had top sheets, and it's too hot in an un-airconditioned place to sleep under a comforter in the summer). One other caveat: Find out what the maximum withdrawal per day your bank allows from at ATM. I forgot to ask and ended up trying to withdraw more than they allow, prompting a fraud alert (only I was in London and the call was made to my US phone number).