Our European Road Trip… and the ‘famous’ Mrs T Hat!

I’ve had A LOT of requests for this blog… you nosey parkers!… so here it is: 

A blog post all about our Honeymoon travels!

So first of all, let me start by saying that this was not a ‘normal’ Honeymoon by any means!…

For those of you who don’t know, I am half-Portuguese and for this reason we decided to get married in Portugal, so more of my family could be there. (I’ll be doing a full blog post all about our Wedding some day soon!) 

We had always wanted to be more traditional in that we wanted to leave for our Honeymoon pretty much straight away after the Wedding, so this is what we did!  

Due to the sheer volume of ‘stuff’ we needed to take with us for the Wedding, me and my Hubby decided it would be better if he drove our car across to Portugal (accompanied by one of his Groomsmen – Richard) and then I would fly out there a few days later. This meant that after the wedding we knew the car would also have to be brought back to England… and this is when Mr T had the brilliant idea for us to do:

A ROAD TRIP ACROSS EUROPE!!! 

Yepp, we drove the car back together across 11 Countries! (As I’ve said before in previous blogs… I’m totally EXTRA… and even though we were technically already on holiday in Portugal for 2 weeks for the Wedding, I wanted an ADDITIONAL holiday for the Honeymoon, meaning adding another 2 weeks on to our travels… clearly 1 Country wasn’t enough so this idea sounded just PERFECT for my level of EXTRA-ness!)

(Richard went back on the plane… he didn’t third wheel the honeymoon, don’t worry!) 

We knew a few places that we wanted to stop on the way (meaning, we looked at a map and picked out places that we recognised the names of, haha!) so we planned out a very rough route using google maps to see how far we’d be travelling (FYI it was 4000km -ish).

We soon realised that the sheer amount of hotel bookings we would need, plus planning the actual route, required expert knowledge… normally we wouldn’t know where to start and who to ask (like I said… it wasn’t a ‘typical’ Honeymoon). Luckily for me I had recently met Eve.

If you saw my blog post (12 Top Getaways for your Honeymoon) you’ll already know that Eve is a Travel Counsellor. We sent her a message and she was so excited to help us plan something totally different!

It literally took her no time at all (I think it was maybe a day or two) to plan everything out and send us a full itinerary of where we would be staying… we couldn’t believe it! 

Honeymoon Route

We booked it all up with her and just before I was about to fly out for the wedding, I received the CUTEST Honeymoon Giftbox from her with lots of little bits and bobs for our road trip (inc. things like; a neck pillow for the passenger and a ‘just married’ car sign – we got a lot of toots and waves for this!)

Once the Wedding Holiday was over, we packed up the car, waved goodbye to Portugal and headed off to our first stop:

Portugal

I didn’t realise at the time that this was the start of ‘The Famous Mrs T Hat’ (as my friends and family now call it!) I knew I wanted to take pictures like this in every country… but I didn’t realise that one day this would become the Logo for my VERY OWN Wedding Business!

Seville, Spain

I will be totally honest here and say that we almost decided to end the Honeymoon here and head home. Although absolutely stunning, we arrived in Seville after a 6 hour drive (the longest stretch of our travels) after 2 full weeks of partying. We were absolutely shattered and arrived into a VERY difficult city to navigate (bearing in mind we were also driving a right hand drive car on the wrong side of the road… so this was TWICE as difficult!). We really started to feel as though we’d made a massive mistake and this wouldn’t be a relaxing Honeymoon AT ALL. We could see the Hotel but couldn’t work out how to get to it… When we got there, we had a slightly terrifying experience in the Hotel car lift, as the Valet refused to park our car (due it being right hand drive) meaning we had to drive it into a TINY car lift which had no sensors on the doors and would therefore randomly shut on you… so you had to make sure you got it right the 1st time otherwise you’d have some pretty big dents in your doors! We also had a slight issue with the room when we arrived BUT… because we’d booked through Eve, we dropped her a text and she got us sorted and upgraded straight away! – it was SO reassuring to have her there just in case anything went wrong along the way! We went out for food and decided to make the most of it and ended up having a lovely time.

We were still in two minds about the whole trip… UNTIL we arrived in Madrid!

Madrid, Spain:

I cannot explain how much Madrid saved the whole Honeymoon for us. We had a 5 hour drive to get there, still not feeling too great about the rest of the journey ahead, we couldn’t decide where to go and eat and spent 30 mins standing in Plaza de Santa Ana trying to decide, worrying that we’d choose somewhere awful. My sister messaged me and said download FourSquare… I don’t know why I hadn’t thought to do this already (I blame the tiredness from the journey)… we picked the nearest place with the best reviews (an Argentinian restaurant) not thinking much of it… but then it happened… LITERALLY the BEST meal we’ve ever had in our lives. Literally… we would WALK from England to Spain for this meal. Absolutely UNREAL. 

It totally saved the trip for us and got us SO excited to explore more and experience new things. We got up early the next day and spent the full morning on those little hire Scooters zooming around. I couldn’t stop laughing at my absolute CHILD of a Husband, he was having the best time. 

We decided from here that the best way to travel would be to spend the morning exploring each new place, have lunch and then travelling during the hottest part of the day so that we had the air-con. This meant that we would arrive in each place late afternoon/early evening and head straight out for Dinner. This ended up working perfectly for us… it was very full on, but we knew it would be! Eve had helped us to plan it so that each day, the drive was shorter than the last, so the big stretches were done on the first few days and then as we got more tired we had less distance to travel… this is definitely something I would recommended thinking about when planning your route.

Barcelona, Spain

Our next stop was a short one… we arrived late and left early the next day as we wanted to spend some time in the South of France before heading off to Monaco. 

Cannes, France

We spent the full afternoon relaxing in the South of France…

(THIS is where my Profile Pic was taken… which has now become The Wedding Taylor Logo!) 

Nice, France

Looking back now, one thing we would change would be to extend our stay in the South of France… we’ll definitely be returning to Cannes & Nice, hopefully sometime in the near future… as we totally fell in love with the place and didn’t want to leave! (I’d go back just for the Macarons!) 

We didn’t have any hotels booked for here so we continued our drive and headed off to Monaco…

Monte Carlo, Monaco

Probably the place we were the MOST excited for out of the whole trip. (We’re BIG Formula One Fans in our house!)

Again, reluctant to leave but feeling like we’d seen a lot (Monaco is tiny so we felt like we’d covered a good chunk of it!)… we headed off to Italy.

Milan, Italy

Lake Como, Italy

On our route to Zurich we decided that we couldn’t NOT stop at Lake Como so we ended up spending the full day there! Such a peaceful day out on a boat trip… slight trauma when the wind ALMOST took the Mrs T hat away!! 

Zurich, Switzerland

I know it seems like there was a hell of a lot of driving involved but I can’t even describe the VIEWS, especially from Monaco to Milan and then Lake Como to Zurich. We drove through the Alps and the water in the lakes was the most stunning purple colour… our phones couldn’t capture what our eyes were seeing, so all I can say is… you HAVE to go and see it for yourselves!

I have to say here that I adored Zurich… I really wasn’t that bothered about it beforehand to be honest… it was just another stop on our trip… but it is definitely somewhere that I would recommend visiting now! Some of our best memories of the trip were here. All I would say though is… it is EXPENSIVE. Like more expensive than Monaco. We also TOTALLY forgot that the currency is different there… we hadn’t even thought about it as we’d been using Euro’s for the last 3 weeks at that point! We had to get our money changed into Swiss Francs at the hotel… so the exchange rate could have been slightly better if we’d have been more prepared! 

Frankfurt, Germany

We headed off to Frankfurt and as we’d had a long day exploring we were super tired when we got there. We had a pretty scary but amazing drive as we got caught in a Thunder & Lightning storm with HUGE PINK thunderbolts cracking right above our little car! It was definitely an experience we’ll never forget! We arrived and decided we just wanted to spend the evening in our hotel room… too tired for restaurants we headed to a local takeaway, and again… out nowhere had one of the NICEST meals of the whole trip! Although I love to PLAN PLAN PLAN… I would definitely recommend just heading out and discovering/trying new things in each place… you never know what you’ll find by accident! 

We genuinely thought we were too far away from the Ring itself, so hadn’t included it in our travel plan… and again… by total accident or FATE, we took a wrong turn and randomly ended up having the best experience. Being huge racing fans this was definitely one of the highlights of our trip! You can pay to take your own car onto the Ring, or you can get a ‘Taxi’ Ride… in hindsight we probably should have done the latter due to how overloaded our car was! Also, just as a tip, if you want to find the best places to stand and watch, head to google and search for some racing forums. They know all the good spots!

Luxembourg

From there we continued our trip into Luxembourg and had a surprising entrance as there was paparazzi gathered at the Hotel Reception… 

Our next stop on the list I was super excited for as I’ve got SUCH a sweet tooth… 

Brussels, Belgium

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Nearing the end of our journey we headed off to Amsterdam. We’d actually been here before so we thought we’d seen the main bits, the man reason we were ending the trip here was because it’s the closest Ferry port to home. We headed out for dinner and couldn’t believe how much we’d missed the first time around. After doing Amsterdam again I’d definitely recommend revisiting previous places more than once, the city might surprise you! 

Home, England

And then it was finally time for home… After a month of being away we were ready to head for home and start our lives as NEWLY WEDS! 

Our Advice:

The MAIN pieces of advice I will leave you with, if you’re thinking of planning a similar trip for yourselves are: 

• Take more money than you think you will need… it’s pretty easy to calculate fuel in terms of mileage… but do over-budget for this… it’s hotter, the car is working harder (especially with the air con on full blast the entire time!) and if you go the wrong way you want to have enough fuel savings to account for this. Don’t let your tank get too low at any point… especially if you don’t know where the next stop will be! 
• Also money-wise… we genuinely thought we’d planned all the ‘tolls’ correctly. There ended up being MUCH more than we thought there would be, and some of them were really expensive due to the distance we’d covered! Also make sure to take different forms of payment methods for all the tolls. Some only take cash, some only take card and some ONLY take credit card. It’s a quick dart as you approach the tolls for the passenger to grab the correct payment method… it was a bit intimidating at first (especially if you’re not the most confident driver – but then I would say this trip DEFINITELY is not for you anyway)… as there are a lot of cars approaching all at once, and there is A LOT of beeping and honking going on… but you quickly get the hang of it and it’s nothing to be nervous about if you’ve got all your different payment methods sorted… we didn’t know this in advance and learned the hard way on the spot (with lots of people beeping at us! Haha). 
• Also… ALL the petrol stations are different along the way. Some are pay at the pump and others you have to go in and speak to the cashier BEFORE they allow you to take any fuel. When you pull up to one… just watch what everyone else is doing and copy them! 
• Make sure your car is serviced and air-con is topped up before you leave!
• Use your Wedding Hashtag (or create a NEW Honeymoon Hashtag) to quickly locate your pictures on socials later down the line! Ours was #TaylorsOnTour 
• Post your pics EACH day… and make notes in the captions about everything you saw/did… it’s an overwhelming experience and you’ll see and do SO many different things that you will forget the smaller details, which are often the best bits. My family & friends also said that they really enjoyed seeing a new post each day as they felt like they were coming along on our travels with us! (They especially enjoyed seeing ‘The Famous Mrs T Hat’ pop up in a different destination each day!)
• Get your Spotify Travelling Playlists ready before you go! (And make sure your music is downloaded and available offline… you may not always have signal/don’t want to use too much data!). 
• At each Border crossing Dale received a little ‘Welcome to this County’ message on his phone but for some reason I didn’t and mine stopped working each time (without me realising at first! You don’t want to end up in a foreign country with no way of contacting anyone if you get separated!). But don’t worry… just use the trusty old ‘switch it On & Off again method’ and it sorts itself out just fine! 
• Download films/TV series on your iPad for the passenger to watch! – You want to see the sights but on some of the main roads (especially the ones between the Spanish cities… there wasn’t AS much to see!)
• Share the driving between the two of you (if you can!) 
• Get a list on your phone of some really good car games to play (‘I Spy’ will only last you so long!). As Mr T is a really big movie fan, we enjoyed playing ‘6 Degrees of Separation’ – where you name two random Celebrities and try to get from one to the other by naming films that they’ve been in, with other people as the links (you get 6 moves max!) this ended up keeping us entertained for hours without even realising! 
• Plan your route in advance… but don’t be TOO precious about it. Explore and Enjoy! 
• This trip was definitely a brilliant way of travelling for our Destination Wedding. It enabled us to pack EVERYTHING we needed for the Wedding (not just what we could fit in one suitcase!) an transport it there safely. It’s a massive issue that people ALWAYS forget about when planning their destination Wedding… HOW will you get everything there? Also as we were paying a lot of our suppliers in cash (which is typical of destination weddings) it meant that we didn’t have to stop and declare the money at customs (saving us extra hassle!)
• It’s also a brilliant holiday to do BEFORE having kids… as much as I want to take Aurora everywhere and show her the world… I don’t think trying to put a 1.5 year old in a car for multiple hours every day would have been much fun! 
• Also just as a note, the hotels weren’t expensive at all!  

Overall, we would definitely recommend doing a trip like this! It definitely isn’t for everyone… but it was one hell of an experience… seeing all those countries and cities in one go… we’ll never ever forget it! 

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading all about our travels! If you have any questions please feel free to drop me a message on my contact page, or a DM on instagram!

And let me know where you’re heading on your Honeymoon… I’d love to know if anyone is planning a similar trip to this?

Lots of Love,

Mrs (& Mr) T x

P.S. Don’t forget to check out My Girl @stephfoxtravel for all your Honeymoon & Mini-Moon Travel Inspo!