You can make a case for this trip being 48 years in the making, or since 2007, however, it’s more since the pandemic that this trip really started to take shape.

During the pandemic, I binged on Youtube British Documentaries. I swore to myself that as soon as the pandemic was over I was going to go to Paris and London. However things kept getting in the way. In late May of 2025 I was starting to say ‘maybe next year’ for this trip, then I thought ‘next year will have something else come up, I should go this year.’ So I started to really plan it. I have a spreadsheet of things to do, and I started to figure out where I should go. The three places for sure were London, Paris, and Billund, Denmark.

I then said which should I go to first, either Billund or London. I chose Billund, then I said how to get from Billund to Paris, and I chose the Eurostar. So that put Amsterdam and Brussels on the map. I toyed with adding Luxembourg to the list, but the trains to get there and back would be more than I wanted.

I then looked at things in Amsterdam and Brussels to do. I rewatched The Amazing Race episodes for those cities. I also watched Belgium in 48 Hours with Richard Ayoade and Lee Mack which only gave me the Comic Strip Museum.

I also really wanted the Oyster Card, since I had the Orca Card for Seattle’s transit. Then I found that Paris had a transit card, then also Amsterdam and Brussels had transit cards so I wanted all four.

I watched the movies ‘See How they Run’ to add seeing ‘The Mouse Trap.’ Then I also liked the movie ‘Amsterdam.’

There were also some parallels to last year's travel. Last year I collected Star Wars stuff, this year it was Harry Potter. I went to the Exploratorium last year so I wanted to add a Science Museum to this year.