Summer vacation planning update

As I sit in the CVG airport waiting on a delayed flight to Orlando for a couple of days of business meetings, I thought I would post a quick update on the planning for our Summer vacation to Europe. A quick recap: after last year’s summer vacation to the Outer Banks, DeAnna and I realized that our kids were finally old enough that they were not a total pain in the a$$, so it might finally be time to go beyond the safe confines of a vacation with the entire extended family and start to take them to see a bit of the world. So, we set up some general parameters and let each member of the family pick a city that we would see for 4 days, with a travel day in between. Mason picked London, Kendall picked Spain (I narrowed that down to Barcelona), DeAnna picked Italy (once again narrowed down to Rome) and I picked Paris.
So now to the real nitty gritty of planning. First up, we got our flights. After using various banks of miles and looking at all possible permutations we got four tickets (toegther even!) that will get us from Cincinnati through Boston to London Heathrow and then back from Barcelona through Atlanta to Cincinnati two and a half weeks later. We also went down to the Covington post office and applied for the kids’ passports (which was suprisingly easy other than the fact that DeAnna and I both had to go – I guess to prove that we weren’t kidnapping the kids to a foreign country).
Right now I am in the process of filling in the places we will stay and our inter-European transport. So far, I have booked us a flat in London, a flight on easyJet from London to Rome and a flat in Rome. Next up I have to find us a way from Rome to Paris (thinking about booking the night train), a flat in Paris, a way from Paris to Barcelona (thinking about renting a car and driving through the south of France) and lastly a flat in Barcelona. The goal is to get that all ironed out in the next few weeks and then spend the remaining time between now and our departure deciding what we want to see. It’s a few months away, but I for one am already really excited. As always, suggestions welcome.