This blog is primarily for family and friends, but I guess I'll give a short description of who I am and what I'm doing. As the blog description says, we (myself and one of my best friends, Tess) are going to 4 countries and 8 (possibly more) cities. We start off in Germany (Berlin and Hanover), train it to France (Paris), train to Italy (Milan, Cinque Terre, Pisa, Florence and Venice) and then have a layover in Iceland. I've been to Berlin and Hanover before, and absolutely fell in love with Deutschland and its denizens; but France and Italy will be completely new experiences for me. To say I'm a looking forward to it would be an extreme understatement.
So even though Tess and I live on opposite ends of the country, we're totally still packing at the last minute. I am doing my best to put all my clothes in one, 35-liter backpack, as my last trip to Europe was spent hauling a considerably sized suitcase a considerably long time. In that regard, I'm only bringing enough clothing to last about 6 days and will either do laundry at some of our longer stops (Paris, Cinque Terre) or completely gross Tess out. Either way it seems like a win/win.
Before I go, here are some tips I learned from planning this trip:
1. Never buy Euro from an American bank. They will upcharge you while telling you the service is completely free (I'm looking at you Chase). Just get enough Euro to last you till you can find a local atm and take out cash there. It is much cheaper.
2. Don't be afraid to buy air-tickets one way at a time - we saved a considerable amount of money doing this.
3. Foreign power adapters are insanely cheap on www.amazon.com.
4. TripIt is probably one of the most amazing traveling apps I have ever seen. This thing has single-handedly organized our entire trip and is keeping us updated on all travel changes and flight details.
Anyways, I'm going to make a solid attempt to update this thing while we're traveling, although I'm somewhat thinking this might be forgotten as soon as I hit foreign soil.
To be determined....
