Preview: Summer 2012

I thought I’d take the opportunity to go into a little detail about the summer trip. I’ve been finalizing some of the stuff we decided to book in advance.  About 32 days until Clint arrives in Europe! (I'm not counting or anything) I cannot wait for him to get off that plane in Granada! I can’t wait to see a familiar face! And I also can’t wait to get this summer trip started that we’ve been waiting a very long time for! J I don’t recall how deep I’ve went into our travel plans and I hope this isn’t repetitive, but I thought I’d just share a bit about our plans. In all honesty, we’re doing our best not to make plans. We kind of want to just go with the flow and let the trip happen to us. We’ve done a little research and know general places we want to visit while we are in each country, but we’re mainly just doing our best to have an open mind to the whole adventure. Neither one of us want to have a “be here at this time, be there at that time” kind of summer schedule. We want to be relaxed and go with the flow. Our schedule of countries is set, however, as we had to book flights from place to place. We considered getting a EuroRail ticket as our way of traveling and take trains everywhere, but the price for all of our flights combined was less than what the EuroRail ticket would have been. Not to mention, the amount of time we’ll save by flying from place to place rather than taking a much lengthier journey via train. It freed up so many days for us to do other things, so the benefits were quite numerous. Anyway, we will begin our journey with a brief stay in Malaga on the southern coast of Spain. We decided to go to Ronda while in the area so we can focus on other regions of Spain when we return in July. We depart from Malaga and head to Ireland. We fly into Cork in southern Ireland. We have a week in Ireland and must make our way up to Dublin as our flight to Greece departs from there. Greece is the next country on our list and we’ve allowed a little less than two weeks to spend in Greece. From Athens to the islands to Mt. Olympus in the north, we’ve got plenty of time to take in Greece. From there, we head to The Netherlands. Amsterdam, to be exact. We’ll be spending a little under a week in Amsterdam. Here, we have tickets to see Pearl Jam, one of the few things we have booked solidly on our trip. After Amsterdam, we fly to Italy. We’ll specifically be staying in the Rome area for a little under a week. Clint’s birthday will be spent in Rome as well as the 4^th of July. J If Rome is anything like Venice in beauty, I cannot wait to see it! After Rome, we head back to Spain for the final two weeks of our journey. We’ll begin in the northern region with San Fermin. Translation: The Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. That is also one of the few things we have booked solidly on our trip. We are actually camping near the beach in San Sebastian and catching a bus to Pamplona early, early in the morning. J Clint is planning to participate in the running while I plan on manning a video camera and a cerveza. We’ll have a little less than two weeks to then make our journey around Spain before ending up in Granada to catch our flight back to the states. Like I said, we don’t have anything really planned out outside of the flight plans. That’s not really normal for me, haha, as I tend to like all things planned out, but this laid back Spanish lifestyle is rubbing off on me and I am quite alright with that. J

Rest assured, you’ll hear plenty about our travels. Many places will come equipped with Wi-fi, so I will do my best to keep you up to date. We’ve got a really great opportunity in front of us and we plan on taking FULL advantage of it. J

If any of you have suggestions on places to visit or ideas of things to do, we are always open to new ideas!  Please feel free to comment here or send me an e-mail!  I would love to hear personal experiences or suggestions, for sure. 

Besos!