The 2025 Europe trip planning started with signing up with The Good Life Abroad for a month's apartment rental in Florence, Italy for May 4 to June 3. My motivation was to push my comfort zone boundaries and determine if extended Europe trips should become the new normal. Later, Niche Travel announced another Alan Doyle riverboat cruise that would end 6 days before my Florence stay began. So, Bill and I signed up for the riverboat cruise, then decided to add a few days in Romania and Bulgaria before the riverboat trip started, and to spend a few days in Budapest and Paris between the cruise and our stay in Florence. Bill would also stay for a week in Florence.
Originally, I booked an outbound from LAX direct to Vienna, then on to Bucharest. But United changed the flight, so now I was first going to Newark, NJ, then on to Vienna. This flight change worked to the good since Bill’s flight also got changed, and we were on the same Newark to Vienna flight.
