Saturday, June 20, 2009

Getting Ready to Go, Help Us Out

Hey everybody. I've never really done one of these before so bear with me for a bit.

Ali and I are counting down the days until we leave on our trip. Unfortunately, there's a lot to do before we get to leave. I have to take the bar exam at the end of July. Then we have to pack up the house and move it all to storage while packing for our trip and getting our affairs in order for the three months or so we will be gone.

Despite all that is going on otherwise, I find it more fun to plan for our trip even if I don't intend to follow that plan once we get out there. So far we plan to be mostly in Italy and Spain with stops in France, London, Dublin, Boston, and Texas. We'll be gone a long time and will probably get sick of hanging out with only each other, so feel free to meet up with us anywhere you'd like.

With that said, here's our mostly fluid itinerary. If you have any advice or suggestions about the places we are going or places we have to go, let us know. We have enough open dates to fit stuff in on the fly:

August 12-15: New Braunfels, Texas.
August 15-18: Boston
August 19 (at 5:30 a.m.)-22: Dublin
August 22-25: London
August 25-26: Milan
August 26-September 1: Some combination of Lake Como, Lake Garda, Verona, and whatever else is in the area.
September 1-4: Venice
September 4-6: Bologna
September 6-17: Tuscany and potentially Umbria. Florence and Siena are definitely inn. Other than that we have time to fill in with other places. Hill towns? Perugia? Assisi? Beach towns? Any places that people can recommend are helpful.
September 17-24: Rome. We have rented an apartment in Trastevere for the week. We actually have an extra bedroom and would be happy to have people come join us for this part of the trip.
September 24-???: After this things are a little bit uncertain. We will definitely be going to Paris. We are not sure if we will fly and go straight to Paris or if we will take a train to Nice for a stop on the way. We will probably be renting an apartment again in Paris, although not until shortly before we go. Then we will head down to Spain. That part of the trip will probably be mostly improvised. At the very least we will be doing San Sebastian for about a week, Barcelona, Madrid, and Granada. We will also be hopping over to Morocco for a few days. Lots of other places are possible. Seville? Cadiz? Portugal? Pueblos Blancos? At that point we will have been gone for close to 2.5-3 months and might be ready to come home. Or we might want to squeeze a few more things in.

Either way, we'd be happy to have people meet up with us at any point of the trip. At the very least, we need tips and advice.

I'm not sure how much this will be updated before we go because there is so much going on, but look for pictures and notes once we get out there.