itinerary

I LEAVE TODAY!!!
heres a brief run down of my general schedule if youre interested:


**itinerary is susceptible to change**


march 16: fly out of chicago to amsterdam

march 17: arrive in amsterdam

march 18: netherlands

march 19: netherlands

march 20: netherlands

march 21: netherlands and then fly to london at night

march 22: bus to york, england

march 23: day trip to edinburgh, scotland

march 24: york, england

march 25: bus back to london, england

march 26: london with possible day trips

march 27: london with possible day trips

march 28: london with possible day trips

march 29: london with possible day trips

march 30: london with possible day trips

march 31: london with possible day trips

april 1: london, england

april 2: fly to barcelona, spain

april 3: barcelona, spain

april 4: montpellier, france

april 5: montpellier, france

april 6: marseille, france

april 7: marseille, france

april 8: marseille to geneva, switzerland

april 9: geneva, switzerland

april 10: interlaken, switzerland

april 11: interlaken, switzerland with possible day trips

april 12: interlaken, switzerland with possible day trips

april 13: munich, germany

april 14: munich, germany with day trip to dachau

april 15: salzburg, austria

april 16: salzburg, austria

april 17: vienna, austria

april 18: vienna, austria

april 19: prague, czech republic

april 20: prague, czech 

april 21: rothenburg, germany

april 22: heidelberg and bacharach

april 23: rhine river cruise from bacharach to koblenz

april 24: brugge, belgium

april 25: paris

april 26: paris

april 27: chunnel to london for the night

april 28: fly to belfast, ireland and go to derry

april 29: derry and northern coast

april 30: northern coast of ireland

april 31: northern coast of ireland

may 1: galway or dingle

may 2: galway or dingle

may 3: dublin

may 4: fly home in the morning, be in chicago right around noon!

soon and very soon

another john denver song has recently paralleled my life: all my bags are packed, i'm ready to go! the 30 year old backpack has been washed and waterproofed. another patch was found and added to its already impressive collection. pre-switzerland patch:

i finished up some last minute duties like purchasing tickets to edinburgh and a flight to belfast and revamping my blog page with a few songs. i also made a cute cover strap for my camera. you can now add "seamstress" to the list of my many talents and abilities! :)

in conclusion, i leave in 6 days! and i have completed almost everything on the numerous to-do lists that are scattered around my house. im feelin pretty good!

2 weeks notice

i am at the two week mark. the home stretch. i feel as though the planning has come so far and yet there is so much that still needs to be accomplished. this past week has been productive, though perhaps not quite as productive as i had hoped. i bought my eurail pass, a financially exhilarating process; started booking some hostels; bought a physical journal to write down more thoughts that don't make the cut onto the viral journal; and purchased les miserables from bargain books, my new favorite place. im excited about reading les mis because a) its a french novel and i will be spending a little over a week in the country in question b) its a challenging read so hopefully it'll last me through most of my trip and i'll only need to take the one book c) i haven't seen the musical yet but i plan to someday so it will be nice to know the story intimately.

now for the things that still need to be done:
- make a list of things that i think i need to bring and then cut the list in half (im nervous about this one)
- book more hostels
- purchase miscellaneous tickets for trains (pre-eurail validation), buses, and a flight from london to belfast

wish me luck!

a surge of productivity

the first leg of the trip starts in the netherlands. since it is the fastest approaching part of the journey, you would think that it would have been planned first. apparently that's not how i process things. all attempts thus far to plan the netherlands, have been thwarted. i am trying to plan it with my good friend nikki but to no avail. be it a 2 hour skype call to our girls in england or an episode of the bachelor, nikki and i have not been able to get in touch with our organizational functioning. 

my goal this week is to tap into planning mode and create a new and thorough spreadsheet. this shouldn't be too difficult because i am surprisingly organized with this trip. and once i reach into my traveler's brain, i can't stop the productivity that surges from it. that's why i am writing this post at 2am. i came home from a failed planning meeting at nikki's house tonight and dove into the new spreadsheet - detailing the dates, locations, and sleeping arrangements. before i knew it, 3 hours had passed. it felt like maybe 30 minutes. i love the feeling of productivity! it's been so elusive recently. let's hope it sticks around for a few days; after all, i only have 22 days until departure.

29 days and counting

my backpack and i will be boarding a plane to europe in exactly 29 days. woah. im mostly excited with a little bit of anxiety mixed in (but only a little). i have been planning for months without ceasing. thank goodness i havent had a job for those months otherwise i would have been money-ahead, and who needs more money when youre traveling? that being said, it is my hope that i will adequately couple logic and frugality with flexibility and a strong sense of adventure. i believe that these are some important factors in maintaining a functioning budget while on my travels. i think they will also help me gain as much from this amazing experience as possible. i hope that i can come back from the netherlands, england, scotland, spain, france, switzerland, austria, czech republic, germany, and ireland (maybe belgium too); knowing more about how the world outside of the states operates and, more importantly, knowing more about myself.

to do or not to do?

today i was researching tickets for europe and i came across a site that, when i was waiting for results from a search, listed several random things to do while traveling. i thought some of them were funny, some of them were ridiculous, and some of them were attainable. here are some of the options: invent blisterless clogs, stomp grapes, get lost, split your lederhosen, mistakenly use a bidet, drink glowing green liquid, listen to strange music, pretend to understand a language, look up someone's kilt by mistake. i wonder which of these will be fulfilled while on my journey...

batten down the hatches

history was made today. calvin college cancelled classes for the first time since 1978, so the story goes. it was a time of rejoicing in the land of reformers. the reason for this jubilation is the blizzard many are fondly naming "snowpocalypse." i have never witnessed such an insane amount of snowfall! people were stocking up on the necessities in preparation for said snowpocalypse. i heard meijer was chaos. everything became real to me when i got into my 4-wheel drive blazer this morning and easily cut through the snow that threatened to block me in. a few brave souls had paved the way through the deep snow on our street before my blazer and i could have the pleasure of conquering the road on our own. however, i was still quite giddy whenever i got into my car today and went off-roading (which, in this context, means any of the secondary/neighborhood streets). today was the best day of my car's life. unfortunately it was not all just fun and games; there was some work involved with the blizzard if you can believe it... today i spent a decent amount of time snow blowing, shoveling, and rescuing cars that had foolishly driven into snow that was beyond their capabilities. this may sound crazy but i didnt despise doing all of that. i think that what made it ok was the fact that the sun was shining, a rare occurance in the west michigan area. sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy (john denver knows what he's talking about) but the opposite is also true. darkness is not the condition in which i prefer to snow blow. that being said, you can imagine my dismay when i pulled up to my house and realized, with one horrified look at the end of my driveway, that the snow plow had visited. midnight - hard snow, three feet high. such is the life of a michigan resident.

modeling the height of the snow at 2am... it snowed for another 7+ hours