Final countdown
The Idea: hit the road with my teenage daughter [hereafter known as the Babe on a Scooter, Stoically or BOSS for short]. This needs to happen before she decides mum is no longer as cool as she thought - although I think this time has already passed.
The Original Plan: Travel around western Europe on a scooter for 4 months. This plan lasted about five minutes until the BOSS discovered her entire luggage allowance would need to fit into one motorbike pannier bag.
Renegotiating the Plan: Travel by Eurail and hire scooters in each city to do day trips to surrounding areas. The biggest problem with this idea was the availability of scooters big enough to take two people comfortably. The little 125cc city bikes just don't like the open road. Also Eurail turned out to be unbelievably expensive compared to internal flights.
Modifying the Plan: After many many emails I finally found a motorbike shop willing to hire me a 200cc scooter (An Aprilia Sportcity in fact - the same scooter I ride in Australia). Cheers to the guys at Moto Centre Thun. So, with this, the only scooter on offer, we changed all our plans to centre around a month long scooter trip through Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
The Final Itinerary: Sydney, Hong Kong, England, Athens, Santorini, Crete, Rome, Tuscany, Venice, Budapest, Geneva, Thun (pick up bike), the Swiss Alps, Austria, Germany, Switzerland (drop off bike) Amsterdam, Belgium, Luxembourg, Trier, Paris, London (pick up another bike), Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England, New York, Sydney... exhaustion, bankruptcy, nervous breakdown.