Alright, time for some clarity i think. Heres what we've decided on so far:
On Monday 1st of August, everyone except Lily arrives in
Seville on
Ryanair flight 8363 which is scheduled to arrive at
20:30 [bear in mind Ryanair flights have a tendancy for lateness]. As this is a late arrival, i suggest we find somewhere to stay that night in Seville. The airport is not far from the city [12 kilometers] and theres a bus you can get so that shouldnt be a problem.
After this, we are pretty much set on going down to Morocco after meeting Lily, although we have no concrete plans on when/how these things will happen. I reckon getting to Morocco on the 3rd/4th is realistic unless we want a military precision day of travelling and meeting up the day after landing.
I think everyone is pretty keen on Morocco [apart from the prospect of sunburn from hell] so i assume we will spend a fair amount of time there [particularly if we want to leave Tangier and go to Casablanca/Marakesh/other big Moroccan town]... say 7 days at least?
The next main port of call is to arrive in
Lille on the 16th /17th so that people who want to go home for their results [released on the 17th] can get the
Eurostar back to London town which was under 50 quid return last time I checked if you're interested. At this point the rest of the team left in Europe will head to nearby Amsterdam and await the return of those who got the eurostar, probably on the 18th/19th i reckon.
The first main obvious hole in our plan is what we're up to in between Morocco and Lille: whether or not we stop in Spain or southern France etc. I think some Spanish cities like Madrid/Barcalona/Valencia were suggested as options, along with Lily's house in
Carcassonne. We've also gotta remember that it will take a couple of days at best to travel through Spain and France, probably longer... so we need to leave enough time to get to Lille basically.
After we have regrouped in Amsterdam, the rest of Europe to the East is our oyster. At the last meeting we put a fair few hand crafted flags down on places that we liked the sound of, but there were loads: Berlin/Munich/Vienna/Prague/Warsaw are some that i remember, but there were more and we didnt settle on anything. We were in a general agreement that it would be nice to finally end up in Croatia by the sea to relax after 3 weeks of hard travelling.
Our return to London will be on
Tuesday the 30th of August on
Ryanair flight 5733, which departs at
14:55 from Graz airport in Austria. I reckon that means we'll have to be in Austria on the 29th.
As our plans are still pretty embryonic, id say we need another meeting to decide on definate things, particularly: meeting Lily and getting to Morocco, getting from Morocco to Lille and what to do inbetween and where to hit on our way to Croatia.
The other main issue is where we'll sleep for the trip. I think that tents are generally in favour at the moment, but for certain places like Morocco [where the hostels are cheap and the campsites are far out of town and unsheltered from the sun] and Amsterdam [unlikely to provide good camping facilities?] we should probably look at trying to sort some bookings in advance for hostels, particularly amsterdam, which will be busy and probably the most expensive place.
Anyway, add comments of things ive missed/got wrong/ideas etc.
