Monday September 6th-Travel Plans!

Hello Family, Friends, and any strangers peeping in on our blog!

So, our Travel Adventures are taking shape.  In fact, we're leaving tomorrow!  I had mentioned before that we were starting to make plans and sometimes (all the time) when I start planning, I just can't stop.  Kyle is very patient and supports my manic planning, but it I think it will all be worth it.  In fact, last time I got us well-planned for an event we ended up married, and that's been going well so far!

OK, let's get serious.  Here are our potential destinations:
-London
-Brussels (you talked us into it, Rachel!)
-Amsterdam
-Berlin
-Prague
-Munich
-Salzburg
-Venice
-Rome

I say that the destinations are potential because we've only booked transport and lodging through Amsterdam.  There are a few factors contributing to our hesitation to plan further.  For example, it hadn't occured to me when I laid out this schedule that Oktoberfest will be happening this month in Munich.  In fact, it starts the week before we had planned to be there.  Naturally, we were totally stoked (cross your fingers for gluten-free beer!), and, just as naturally, there is not a damn place to stay.  Kyle is trying to get us booked into a campsite that shuttles drunk people, I mean guests, to and from Oktoberfest, so we're just waiting to hear back from them.  Until we know when we have accomodations for Oktoberfest, we're not scheduling any more cities since we'll likely have to be pretty flexible with our plans.  Bottom line: we'll sleep in some ditches if we must, but we're going to Oktoberfest! 

The other complicating factor regarding planning is actually a nice one: we want to be flexible!  We have the gift of time, as well as the gift of the internet, so we want to be free to deviate from our potential schedule if we find there's a city we want to spend more time in, or perhaps a city that we can't wait to leave.  Those of you who know how comforted I am by plans and by knowing what is happening next (no, not a control freak; an admirer of control) may be surprised by this seemingly unstructured schedule.  But, I'm challenging myself to go with the flow and to have true adventures with Kyle! 

You will notice that there are many places not on our list of destinations.  For example, we're not planning to go to France this time around.  Nor have we included Sweden (need to say hi Monika!) or Finland (gluten-free capitol of the world!), or anywhere in Eastern Europe.  That is because we do hope to do more traveling once we are done preparing my grandparent's house to sell.  We're aiming for April to do some other big trips, but of course our bank account will help to confirm if that's feasible!

You may be wondering why we're taking off so fast since we've barely been in England for two weeks.  The reason is so I can be back in town to start my job here in Sheffield on October 4th.  Yay, an income!  We wanted to get in as much as we could while the weather was favorable and we had a lot of free time, so we're going for it!

And don't worry, you'll hear plenty of babble from me via this wonky blog (and maybe even from Kyle if the spirit moves him!) and my Facebook account.  We hope you are all very well; lots of love from Sheffield.

P.S.  Sorry, no pictures to share.  You must be crushed.