Early planning stages

In approximately 15 months I'm planning to head to Europe again, this time with the boy child (who will be 9 by then).


The Olympic Games (just in case you live on another planet) will be in London next year, and while the Games themselves will be over by the time we're heading to Europe, I'm not convinced there won't still be some knock-on effects (quite possibly in the form of higher prices!), so we're going to skip England this time.

Instead we'll head back to Paris, then to Venice, and back down to Rome again. At least, that's the broad plan at this stage. I was really pleased with how things worked out last year, so we'll be looking at the same sort of thing again - spending a week or two in each city, doing a lot of exploring on foot, and taking it at a kid's pace (although apparently there'll be less time spent on the carousels of Paris - the boy is less keen on them). We'll base ourselves in an apartment in each city, and maybe do a day trip or two, although I probably won't pre-book too much - we'll just wing it when we're there.

Definites:

• Up to the top of the Eiffel Tower again (the X-man has asked for this).
• Rides on the canals of Venice - perhaps on a gondola, or maybe just on the vaporetto.
• The Colosseum and the Forum in Rome.