What We’ve Learned

Now that we are home we’ve had a little time to reflect on our trip and everything we saw along the way.

Here are some final observations that we have all made during our travels:

· We can get by with a lot less! The four of us shared very tight quarters for 2 weeks. Our Barcelona hotel room (including the bathroom) and our Disney Cruise stateroom were smaller than Sydney’s bedroom at home and yet we had everything we needed!

· When you have less to take care of you have more time for living.

· The toilet bowls have a lot less water than American toilets. Don’t know if this is a significant fact but we found it interesting.

· Limited living space means everything is smaller. Our apartment had a washer that was also a dryer. Idea sounds good but it was very small and took 3 hours to get clothes semi dry. Now I know why Europeans hang their laundry outside to dry. Most apartments probably don’t even have space for a washer/dryer.

· They make the most of their living space. Their tiny balconies serve as their garden.

· We never saw any school busses, which leads us to believe either kids take public transportation to school, walk, or parents take them. We read that in some schools there are busses but you do have to pay a fee for that service.

· School kids have awesome field trips! We saw them at most places such as the Cinque Terre, Monaco, and even in the airport on their way to some destination.

· Peanut butter is not available. Never saw it any grocery stores. They use Nutella like we would use peanut butter.

· There were no large supermarkets. The grocery stores were all small family owned businesses.

· The locals went out of their way to help us. Very friendly!