Planning the Year of Travel: Fall 2025 Europe

My wife and I took the 2025-2026 year off of work and decided to travel around the world. This blog post is inspired by my conversations with others asking how we planned and prepared for this year of travel.

Note: This is a retelling from my point of view. My wife’s memories may differ from mine. That’s okay (but I’m correct).

The Birth of the Sabbatical Year

We started planning in May 2023 to take the August 2024-July 2025 year off. There were a couple of things that sparked traveling in our early 30s:

• Physical ability - we wanted to travel before we were too old to move, basically before we retired
• Family - we wanted to be more flexible and do more things than might be possible with kids
• Reaching year 10 of teaching - this lines up with a natural sabbatical year

Although we decided in May 2023, we did not take the following school year off. My students had already signed up for their classes expecting me as their teacher - some for the 4th time - and I wasn’t going to pull a rug pull on them. So I taught the 2023-2024 year, prepared my students and admin for my departure, and helped search for a replacement. I specifically wanted a full replacement rather than a long-term sub - it didn’t sit right with me to leave my CS students with someone who wasn’t hired to teach the subject.

An astute reader may notice the first sentence stated we took 2025-2026 off, and yet this section states we were planning on taking 2024-2025 off. Long story short - a district administrator forwarded me a link to the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship, I applied, and I served at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as an Einstein Fellow for 2024-2025. That pushed our sabbatical year to 2025-2026. But that’s another story for another time (post incoming).

Planning the Odyssey

We decided on Europe in the Fall and Asia in the Spring. Here are a few things we planned around:

Weather: We wanted to travel to places while the weather was good - not too much rain, not too much sun - everything was juuust right. This generally meant we went from further from the equator to closer to the equator as September turned to December. Unfortunately, much of Southeast Asia is hot year-round, but we did try to plan around burning season and get as much cool weather as possible during the Asia portion.

Shoulder Seasons: Traveling in peak season is really expensive, especially airfare and lodging. Peak season also means crowds, which significantly detract from the experience. Shoulder seasons typically have just as good weather, with fewer crowds and cheaper transportation. I highly recommend it - it really helped with crowds in Italy especially.

Places/Events: We didn’t want an itinerary where we were flying around everywhere. We wanted to travel by train as much as possible to take advantage of Europe’s rail network. But we also had specific destinations in mind - the Eastern European countries of Bulgaria and Hungary, Vienna and Prague and German cities for Christmas markets, and cherry blossoms in Japan in the spring.

Our final Fall itinerary looked like this:

• Houston → fly to Ireland (2 weeks)
• Ireland → fly to Scotland (2 weeks)
• Scotland → fly to Stockholm, Sweden (3 nights)
• Stockholm → train to Copenhagen, Denmark (3 nights)
• Copenhagen → fly to Switzerland (9 nights)
• Switzerland → train to Slovenia (11 nights)
• Slovenia → train to Croatia (10 nights)
• Croatia → train to Budapest, Hungary (7 nights)
• Budapest → fly to Bulgaria (10 nights)
• Bulgaria → fly to Italy (13 nights)
• Italy → fly to Vienna, Austria (6 nights)
• Vienna → train to Prague, Czechia (4 nights)
• Prague → train to Germany (8 nights)
• Germany → train to Salzburg, Austria (3 nights)
• Salzburg → train to Germany (1 night)
• Germany → fly to Houston

As you can see, we tried to take trains as much as possible. The flights were mostly for longer distances or when rail connections didn’t make sense - like getting from Scotland to Stockholm, or from Bulgaria to Italy.

European Highlights

Ireland - Friendliest hosts we encountered on the entire trip. Great live music and hiking.

Stockholm, Sweden - Fika culture, incredible walkability, and some of the best weather we had all trip.

Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland - Amazing hikes and paragliding over the Alps.

Slovenia - Burek and yogurt for breakfast, whitewater kayaking, and nature.

Croatia - Fresh seafood (Split!), big waterfalls, and old war bunkers.

Budapest, Hungary - Live music, incredible food, and a real sense of Eastern European character.

Italy - Food, desserts, sculptures, architecture.

Vienna, Austria - Opera and Christmas markets.

Prague, Czechia - More opera, more amazing food, and more Christmas markets.

Germany - Christmas markets. Lots of Christmas markets.

Returning Home

We returned home a couple of days after Christmas and celebrated New Years with some long-time friends. Then, after taking care of a few things, we embarked on our Spring Asia trip. That will come in the next post.

tl;dr - Top 5 places (in no particular order): Ireland, Sweden (Stockholm), Slovenia, Italy, Czechia/Austria. Highly recommend Ireland for hiking.