Planning!

Hey Everyone!

So this is officially my Europe Blog!! All four of us (Me, Pat, Jen, and Dave) will be keeping a blog while we are spending 5 1/2 amazing weeks backpacking through Europe!! The best part about this is that we can update the blogs through email and even through text message! I set up a flikr account so that I can send in some pictures so you can see all the cool things I'm doing, too! I've linked everyone else's blog to this page, so be sure to read up on what they're writing, too!

Today, the four of us met up to plan our trip more specifically! We have an outline and picked our hostels for the first two countries we'll be in. The hostel's look really nice (much better than the dorm rooms I've heard them described as), so I'm psyched! Our general outline for our trip is as follows (taken directly from Pat's blog):

"We depart from Newark Int. Airport at 5:00 PM {On May 24th} and land the next morning at 8:30 AM in Dublin Airport, Ireland. From there we hope to explore Dublin, Cork (to visit {Pat's} relatives!), Blarney Castle and up to Giants Causeway to name a few plans. Then we aim to take a ferry over to Scotland and see the sights of Edinburgh and Glasgow before heading down the UK to England. After exploring England we will be hopping on a plane to Spain where we will see the sights Barcelona and Madrid have to offer and then hop a train to Paris, France. After a few days in France we will get on a train once again into Switzerland where we will have an exciting day in Interlaken at the foot of the Swiss Alps, as well as seeing Zurich and the capital Burn. From there we will travel all the way down to Naples, and over the course of the next 5 days work our way up Italy hitting Rome, Florence, and Venice. From Venice we will grab an overnight train into Vienna, Austria where we will only spend a day adventuring before getting back onto the train for the 4 hour ride into the heart of the Czech Republic: Prague. After our time in Prague we will be heading into Germany for days of exploring the countryside, touring the Rhine River, and seeing the cities like Berlin. After departing Germany, we will be making our way to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. During our final 3 days of the trip in Amsterdam, we will hopefully take the hour and a half train ride for a day in Belgium just next door, before returning to catch our flight out of the Amsterdam International Airport just to land for a wonderful 11 hour layover in Reykjavik, Iceland. After spending our bonus night in Iceland we will finally come to the end of our adventure and leave for home, landing at 12:30 PM in JFK on July 1st."

Like I said, today we planned out more specifics about Ireland and Scotland. We also took another trip to Eastern Mountain Sports, where I got this really cool skort (yes, a skort... I feel like I'm a catholic school girl again) that wont get wrinkly and I can move around in like they're shorts but they look really nice!! I already have the basics (plane tickets, a backpack, towel that folds up so super tiny, and much much more). The next big thing I need to get are good shoes and my Eurail pass.

I'm so excited to be going on this trip and I hope that with the convenience of this set up, I'll be able to blog on a regular basis (I'll also have a journal though, so everything will be documented no matter what!).

I really hope you enjoy reading this as much as I'll enjoy writing it!

Lots of Love!!!