It seems we received a brochure in the mail from USITT about a trip they were sponsoring for the Prague Quadrennial in the summer of 2011. Their trip began with a flight to Greece, then Turkey and then up to Prague in the space of a couple of weeks. I said something like, “For that kind of money, I think we could do a much better and more extensive trip!” I’m quite sure when we began thinking about this “Prague Trip;” probably sometime around Thanksgiving. Neither of us would be likely to have any summer teaching, the economy being what it is. The PQ  begins near the end of the third summer week. It seems we might as well try to leave as soon as possible and see something of western Europe before Prague. Camping is a given. So the choice of car or train quickly resolved itself to a car. All three French car manufacturers have a “purchase/buy-back” plan, and for a two-month trip, it seems to be the way to go. Probably a Renault Wind, a two-seat roadster with a retractable hard top and 10 cu.ft. of space for the gear, at least that’s what’s got my attention at the moment.

Thursday, February 24^th. Outside of the purchase of a GPS with a European data base, we just made the first big expenditure tonight. There’s no exaggerating the amount of time we’ve spent online shopping for the flight to Paris, where we pick up the car and the trip begins. For a month or so, it looked like LOT, the Polish airline, would be the way to go. . .and we’d touch down first in Warsaw. But, only moments ago, and after months of watching the fares edge up, we nailed Iberian, the Spanish outfit, for nearly $200 less than the Poles! Now we’re in it for sure!