Planning 4 - Wine Tasting Party/Family Reunion

Bill and Debbie planned to come to St. Louis to attend the Smith Family Reunion on June 16, 2018.  Tom and Lisa hosted a wine tasting party on June 15 so that Bill and Debbie could take part.  Between the wine party, the reunion and Father's Day we were able to finalize the plans for the trip.  We all agreed that we could do everything on the list, but decided to avoid Valencia on the way to Barcelona.  Debbie is going to map the sites we'll visit in each city and then the hotels can be booked. Tom and Lisa plan to visit Dallas in September so that last step can be accomplished.  November 1 will be here before we know.

Planning 3 - Lots of Research

Bill and Debbie came to St. Louis over the weekend of March 10, 2018 for Dan and Abby's wedding.  Tom and Lisa had just gotten back into town from their hunting trip to Spain, so there was no time for any trip planning.  Lisa had picked up some maps of the cities in Andalusia for Debbie to use for her mapping.  Debbie went to the library when she returned home and worked on researching the different cities and sites to prepare for the next planning trip in June.

Just a few books for research

The updated map

Planning 2 - New Year's Eve

Bill and Debbie came to St. Louis for New Year's Eve and to work on the trip plans.  Bill had been successful in getting flights into Madrid and out of Barcelona.  We had decided to add an extra day to the trip to allow for the long driving distance.  This would allow us to hit all the sites and cities we had on our list.  We are all satisfied with how the trip is coming together.

This was our projected path and stop

Trip planning tools

New Year's Eve dinner at Citizen Kane's

New Year's Day brunch at Dave and Kathy's

Planning 1 - Let's Go to Spain

We had decided on our previous trip that our next trip would be to Spain.  That decision made, on August 20, 2017, Tom and Lisa made a trip to Dallas to start the planning sessions.  We very quickly decided on what cities we wanted to visit.  The big question was whether we could get flights into Madrid and out of Barcelona.  This would be the deciding factor for what all we could squeeze in.  Since Bill couldn't make the first reservations until November, we would just have to wait until our next planning session to make our final decisions

The map of our selected cities

We always have time for dinner at the Blue Goose