I could have been a travel agent...

I love planning vacations. I love choosing the location, reviewing all of the options, looking for special things to do, pre-paying as much as possible. Then came last year and I failed miserably at planning the trip to CZ. Sure, we got the flights and cars sorted but I planned nothing for when we got there - and neither did Aidan. We sorta did things when we had to and even then we had to push ourselves. I can blame stress for our careless planning job but thankfully, everything fell into place and we did have a great time (with great pictures to remind us of our adventure).

This year we're starting out a bit more organized since we know what we're facing. We're also loving this concept of the coordinator and are using this resource more than we did last year. We heard back from our coordinator this morning, who thanked us for my pap and hsg results and gave us lots of info on the consult schedule. So basically, we need to get to Budapest on June 17th. We'll be picked up at the airport and taken to our hotel by our guide who is assigned to us for the trip. The hotel has been booked so our room is already set! We'll have breakfast in the morning and then our guide will pick us up and take us to the clinic for our 10am appointment. The visit might not be as long as some since we will have done most of our tests up front. We'll then purchase our drugs for the identified protocol and then our guide will take us on a city tour. The day will be rounded out with a visit to the apartment building near the clinic that they encourage patients to stay (complete with kitchenette, etc.). If we fly to London on the 18th, they can get us to the airport by 5 or 6pm. If we stay overnight, we'll fly out early in the morning. Either way, our guide will take us to the airport. We're contemplating staying overnight because it's cheaper than an extra night in London... no decisions yet. If we do, I need to start looking for good restaurants in the area!

So I am hoping to redeem my travel agent dream self with the help of my IVF coordinator in London and my on-the-ground guide in Budapest. Sure, having a consult is like a run-through as well. I would guess that the 10-14 days that we'd then spend in Budapest in September will end up with us getting out of the city.... I am already planning on getting into Austria (I'm addicted). As fror London, you know my ideas from yesterday's post. I plan to start booking that once Aidan has purchased the airfare. That said, we're still hoping for a minor miracle so we can replace our September ideas with solid plans for Ireland...