Hello friends and family! We want to apologize for going so long without updates, but all of us in the Euro Crew have been extremely busy in the past several months. A lot has happened that we would like to share with all of you!
The biggest news to report is that all four of us have in our possession our plane tickets! We would like thank over and over again our Aunt Cari (or mom), Uncle Tommy (or dad), and Grandma for donating frequent flier miles to purchase our tickets. It was an unbelievable blessing that none of us were expecting. So to Cari, Tommy, and Grandma – THANK YOU!!!
Our travel plans have changed slightly: we are now leaving Houston, TX on May 18th and are coming home on June 14th. Also, we are now flying in Paris instead of London. We will be leaving Paris immediately and heading up to London and still plan to start our trip there. Another blessing we would like to share with you is that for Christmas, our Grandma gave all four of us a 4-night stay in a Marriott hotel in London – another blessing that none of us were expecting. We will now be starting our trip in a beautiful hotel instead of a not-so-beautiful hostel. But don’t worry; we will have many nights to get familiar with Europe’s finest hostels!
As for our itinerary, we have had a few additions we would like tell you about:
• We have decided to add Ireland into our trip. We plan on leaving London and heading across England and Whales to take a ferry to Ireland. We are still not exactly sure of all we should do there, so if anyone has any suggestions, please let us know!
• We are planning on visiting Normandy, FR on June 6th, which happens to be the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. We hope to find some US Veterans from the war, buy them a beer and have them tell us their story from the war.
(Normandy beach)
• Depending on timing, we are hoping to be in Pamplona, Spain during the running of the bulls. From what we can find, the running of the bulls begins July 7th and happens every morning for several days. While we know this may upset certain readers, particularly mothers and Grandma’s, we just feel we could not live with ourselves knowing we were there during the running of the bulls and did not participate!
• We have added Gibraltar, Spain into our travel plans, and hope to hit some beaches on our way back up the Costa Del Sol (only the ones that require bathing suits, of course!)
(Gibraltar, Spain)
• We have added several stops on our way to Rome from Switzerland in Northern Italy, including Lake Como, Florence and Siena. We also hope to take a trip from Rome south one day to see Naples and Mt. Vesuvius.
(Lake Como)
• If time allows, we would like to visit Vienna, Austria. Our original plan did not include stopping in Austria, but since we are passing through it on our way to Prague anyways, why not stop and spend a night or two?!
• From Munich, we would like to take a day to travel to Berchtesgaden on the Germany-Austria border to see Hitler’s Eagles Nest.
There are just a few updates we have for our activities!
We have decided to take a laptop with us on our trip. Many of the places we stay will have wireless internet and we have decided to update the blog as regularly as we can during our trip. We are also taking a video camera, so we will be able to do some video-blogs during our trip, hopefully both of testimonials and maybe even some short, edited videos of what we have done in the past few days. We want to keep all you updated on where we are and what we are doing!
The next item on our agenda is to purchase our Eurorail passes. We are doing decent on saving money. We all have enough money saved to buy our train tickets, as well as pay for all of the tours we plan on doing. Now are trying to save money so we can eat and sleep there too! Donations are still welcome! After all of our travel expenses are covered, we are all hoping to save between $4,000-5,000. Please pray for us as we attempt to meet this goal, and if you feel led, feel free to contribute! ☺
Thank you all for your prayers and support. We welcome input as to travel plans, things to do, foods to eat (or foods not to eat!), or any advice on places to stay. If you have friends or family who would be willing to let 4 bums sleep on their floor for a night, please let us know! We love you all!
-The Euro Crew
