A life update
I'm leaving for Europe a week from tomorrow and it finally is starting to feel real. For me, big and exciting things like this only begin to feel like they are actually happening a few days before they really do. I will be arriving in London on Sept. 13 in the very early morning and will spend exactly six weeks traveling around the UK and Western Europe before heading back to London for my flight home. I'm leaving on my mother's birthday (Sept. 12) and coming back the day before mine which unintentionally made the time frame of my trip easy for many people to remember. The only unfortunate thing is that I will have to deal with Heathrow airport in the aftermath of all this terrorist business. I originally planned to fly into Europe a day earlier which would have been the 5-year anniversary of 9/11 but for some reason flights were much cheaper on the 12th.
I'm very lucky to have free lodging in the most expensive areas I plan to visit. My family has family friends in London who I'll stay with my first four or five days in Europe. Then I'll head north to Manchester where I will stay with Ash, a friend I met when studying abroad in England a few years ago. Ash and I are going to Scotland for about five days then I'll be off to France. My most awesome uncle will be in Southern France on a business trip (apparently in a very ritzy city) and I'll get to stay and hang out with him the few days following his conference. Then I'll head north to Paris, hopefully explore that city with Willie and Scoops, and see some more of France. The rest of my trip isn't as structured yet but I do know that I'll be going from France to Switzerland and finally down into Italy. I have a rough idea of exactly where I will go in those countries but if anyone has traveled either place and recommends any area in particular let me know.
I'll probably start a new blog for the trip. I hope to write a bunch but we'll see how that actually pans out.
Besides planning for Europe I've just been hanging out since I got back from San Diego two and a half weeks ago. Amy and I were supposed to go to Seattle this weekend but that was before Jilly (one of our main reasons for going as well as our place to crash) got that freak heart virus. She ended up needing a transplant but got a heart in record time (like 2 days!) because of the circumstances surrounding her and her health. The surgery was a week ago and all seems to be going well so that's good. Amy and I spent some time last week using our superb internet skills to try to figure out who's heart she got. We are incredibly morbid people, apparently.
I thought I might get bored in this downtime but it's been really nice. Probably because I have some great company...
I'm very lucky to have free lodging in the most expensive areas I plan to visit. My family has family friends in London who I'll stay with my first four or five days in Europe. Then I'll head north to Manchester where I will stay with Ash, a friend I met when studying abroad in England a few years ago. Ash and I are going to Scotland for about five days then I'll be off to France. My most awesome uncle will be in Southern France on a business trip (apparently in a very ritzy city) and I'll get to stay and hang out with him the few days following his conference. Then I'll head north to Paris, hopefully explore that city with Willie and Scoops, and see some more of France. The rest of my trip isn't as structured yet but I do know that I'll be going from France to Switzerland and finally down into Italy. I have a rough idea of exactly where I will go in those countries but if anyone has traveled either place and recommends any area in particular let me know.
I'll probably start a new blog for the trip. I hope to write a bunch but we'll see how that actually pans out.
Besides planning for Europe I've just been hanging out since I got back from San Diego two and a half weeks ago. Amy and I were supposed to go to Seattle this weekend but that was before Jilly (one of our main reasons for going as well as our place to crash) got that freak heart virus. She ended up needing a transplant but got a heart in record time (like 2 days!) because of the circumstances surrounding her and her health. The surgery was a week ago and all seems to be going well so that's good. Amy and I spent some time last week using our superb internet skills to try to figure out who's heart she got. We are incredibly morbid people, apparently.
I thought I might get bored in this downtime but it's been really nice. Probably because I have some great company...