when, where, and how
Posted on Mon., June 11th, 2007, 12:34 AM
In January, Gemma and I booked round-trip tickets to Stuttgart, Germany – departing January 17, returning December 18. That’s as much as we had planned.
Since departing from LAX, we’ve been to:
- Stuttgart, Germany (6 weeks)
- Paris, France (6 weeks)
- London, England (6 weeks)
- Edinburgh, Scotland (8 days)
- Ireland (8 days)
- Brussels, Belgium (8 days)
- Amsterdam, Netherlands (8 days)
Within 24 hours, we’ll be in Barcelona, Spain for 4 weeks.
Some of the more notable sights we’ve seen include:
- Wilhelma Zoo
- Eiffel Tower
- Notre Dame
- Versailles (day one, day two)
- The Louvre
- Giverny
- Disneyland
- Catacombes
- Big Ben
- Trafalgar Square
- Harrod’s
- London Bridge
- Stonehenge
- Loch Ness
- Blarney Castle (and the Blarney Stone)
- Anne Frank’s house
- The Mona Lisa, Last Supper, Winged Victory, and other original works by Leonardo Da Vinci, Claude Monet, Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso
We’ve eaten crepes in Paris and chocolate covered waffles in Belgium.
We’ve drunk a pint in London and a Guiness in Ireland.
We’ve been to the hospital in Stuttgart and the Emergency Room in Amsterdam.
We’ve slept in palaces and on dorm room mattresses.
We celebrated Gemma’s birthday with new friends and made new memories with old ones.
We’re only half-way through the trip.
Before we left California, we agreed that if we had to, we would spend all of our savings on this trip. We knew we might not have this opportunity ever again, and we were betting it would be worth it.
Everywhere we’ve been and everything we’ve seen has imbued us with the lessons of experience and history. I’m a long way from fully understanding those lessons, but my instincts tell me we made the right bet.
Guys…SOOO happy to see you enjoying yourselves and spending this time together. I’m quite envious but very happy for you. Tell me this though, how in the world did you plan such a massive trip - I mean how did you know how much money to save (what has this cost thus far??) what hotels, language issues, currency, did you have any friends in the various contries already? if not, how did you meet up with the people in your videos??? Really nice site by the way but would love your insight of how your managing this wild trip thru Europe.
Mike | July 18th, 2007, 4:30 PM | link to this comment
Mike,
I just added a more extensive “about us” page that answers most of your questions.
Basically, we bought round trip tickets to Stuttgart, Germany - departing January 17, returning December 18. We’ve been making up the rest as we go. Fortunately, we’ve both been able to work for clients back in the US via the internet. That income has been enough to finance the trip, but just in case, we saved up a decent amount of money before we left.
Credit cards and ATM machines make currency conversion a non-issue (not to mention that virtually all the countries we’ll be visiting use the Euro).
We have a friend from CA who lives in Stuttgart, but everyone else is a new face.
We use the internet almost exclusively to search, plan, and book everything.
justin | July 20th, 2007, 9:58 PM | link to this comment