I know it's been a few weeks coming, but I finally decided to start a travel blog in preparation of my upcoming trip. While where I'm at now isn't quite Europe, it was quite the journey to get here. Sunday, May 20th: 5:45 p.m. EST: Boo and I finally left DC for Chicago. It might help to mention that I woke up at 6:30 this morning with the hopes of being out of my house by 10 am. But low and behold, I had more boxes/bags than I had room in my car, so Donnie graciously came and picked me and [View Full Entry]

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When this trip was over, and I landed in Detroit to catch my connecting flight to Washington, DC, I had never been happier to be in Michigan. My immediate rehash of the trip left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. So many things had gone wrong, despite the best laid plans of mice and men. I was still missing my boots, my cell phone, all my pictures, the postcards people wouldn't be getting, my credit cards and my backpack. I didn't have a dime to my name to get me from the airport in DC to my home in [View Full Entry]

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Hangovers are a bitch, but you have to push through them when on vacation. We got up early with the intent to catch the train into Amsterdam to play tourist. We got ready and I suggested we drive into the city and park instead of taking the train. We were going to be heading back to Germany at the end of the day and I didn’t think it made sense to head in and then waste 45 minutes getting back to the hotel, get the car and then drive back toward the city. So the girls reluctantly agreed with me and [View Full Entry]

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We arrived to the Hotel Ibis near Schipol Airport, outside of Amsterdam, around 10 pm. We had hoped to be there hours earlier, but were going to play the hand we were dealt. We quickly changed and headed to the airport to catch a train into the city. I was wearing my new $100 boots that I had only worn a couple times and absolutely loved. I was pretty stoked for our night out. We got into the Central Train Station and per Theresa’s determination, headed to a bar to find some pot. Now I don’t smoke and I didn’t have [View Full Entry]

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We were almost finished with our trip, but it seemed like something was constantly going wrong. We ended up having a great time out our second night in Rome, but the problems seemed to push to the front of our conversations. We needed to put Italy behind us and focus on our upcoming trip to Amsterdam. Even though I don’t smoke, I had agreed to eat a brownie or something or other. When in Rome….err…Amsterdam… Our Ryanair flight from Rome landed at Frankfurt Hahn Airport, outside of Frankfurt. Megan, Theresa and I figured that it was going to cost just as [View Full Entry]

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So Megan had been in Europe for a few months and wanted nothing more on her birthday than some “good” American food. So, we took the easy way out and headed to the Hard Rock Café, to be followed by a bus tour of Rome at night. There we met an American who would alter our night drastically. He entertained us with stories of being in the American and Italian armies (yeah, we thought the same thing). He convinced us to ditch our bus tour and let him show us around, he’d even buy us drinks afterward. We figured if he [View Full Entry]

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We woke up at 7 am excited to spend the morning touring around Venice before heading to Rome. I failed to mention in the previous sentence that we woke up at 7 am to a torrential downpour outside our window. There went our tour of Venice—no San Marco Plaza, no gondola ride, just strait on to Rome to start our adventure there. We packed up our stuff, and made our way to the train station, in the rain. Our train ride was nothing to write home about, so I won’t. We pulled into Rome’s main train station and had the fun [View Full Entry]

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Theresa was arriving today. I had been in Germany for 3 days with Megan and we were excited for T’s arrival. The three of us had been friends since high school and we’d had plenty of adventures together. With us, it was a guarantee that something interesting would happen. You had Megan, the level-headed one; Theresa, the culturally naïve one; then there’s me, the one who tends to act without thinking. The 3 Musketeers we were not, the three stooges, more likely. After meeting Theresa at the Frankfurt Airport, we caught a bus to the Frankfurt Hahn Airport to catch our [View Full Entry]

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I was uber excited for today’s trip with Megan. We were leaving the base at 1 am to head to Neuschwanstein to see the world’s most famous castle. We were also going to see another one of Mad King Ludwig’s palaces, Linderhof Castle. All in all, it was going to be a 20-hour roundtrip on a bus full of Americans. We American’s really are a peculiar bunch. For the most part I was sleeping on the bus, but for those moments I was awake, I’d hear weird things. The best had to be the ladies across the aisle from us. When [View Full Entry]

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Bitburg, Germany-- A foreigner walks into a bar. There are two patrons, a bartender and a 3-legged dog. No one speaks a word of English. The foreigner needs to make a phone call, but doesn’t know if they need to dial anything to make an outside call. Foreigner opts to hand the number to the bartender, point to the phone and say, “Bitte” (please). Bartender agrees to make call for the foreigner. So I call my friend Megan to let her know that I’ve made it to the station and she can come pick me up from the Air Force Base [View Full Entry]

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