Kicking if Off

And we're off!

Well, almost--in three days we'll be leaving for a whirlwind European vacation that's been two years in the making. (With the two years we've been talking about this, I thought I'd feel more prepared three days before leaving!) Two years ago, saying we'd be gone for thirty days sounded ridiculous. We'd get homesick or bored--at the very least, we'd exhaust the things we wanted to do and not need to go back, right? Closer up, it turns out that thirty days isn't nearly enough. We will be flying (figuratively) through seven countries and I'm not sure there's a single place that we'll feel we've spent enough time. We'll be skipping through Scotland, England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain; our longest stay in any one place will be six days. For the most part, we'll be in each place for two days.

For those of you joining us for the next month, we'll be posting stories and photos when we land in a hotel with free wifi and a few spare minutes. We're not planning on roughing it--we decided that we're too old to share a bathroom and so will be at hotels rather than hostels for the duration of the trip. Our hotels will range from a few very fancy ones to the cheapest centrally located room we could find: the only real requirements for us were a) NO reviews mentioning bedbugs, b) Our own bathroom, and c) Within walking distance of a good amount of what we wanted to do. It is, however, a carry-on-only journey--and except for the lack of clean laundry, I'm already expecting to feel like we have too much stuff.

So thank you for checking in: I hope you enjoy the pictures and stories! For those of you who want MORE pictures, don't worry--I'm sure Patrick would be more than happy to schedule a time for you to look through all 15,000 or so photos he'll take after we get home. See you all in October!