Travel Tuesday - Backpacking through Europe

Backpacking through Europe has been a dream of mine for such a long time that I can't even remember when it all began.

I have a dream!

My husband, not so much.

After some convincing me obsessively and incessantly talking about it, he started to see the same dream  give in to his obnoxious wife.

A year after the give in, we have finally finished planning our backpacking trip through Europe.  Yes, it took us a whole year to plan it... and yes, I'm actually surprised we got it done in that amount of time!  (A word to the wise:  If planning to go out of the country... plan WAY ahead.)

For anyone who doesn't know, backpacking entails packing very lightly basically nothing, and staying in the cheapest place you can find.  Most of the time this means hostels.  If you don't know what a hostel is like you should google it (don't watch the movie Hostel though... rookie mistake) and then chuckle that something like staying in one of these places could be a part of my dream.  But it really is!

Our trip is ambitious to say the least.  We are planning as though we may never get to go to Europe again.  This translates to fitting in as many things and places into 15 days as possible.

We will be going to:
London, UK
Paris, France
Rome, Italy
Dublin, Ireland

Did I mention this is all in 15 days?  Two of which will be spent flying between the U.S. and Europe??
Did I mention the year of planning? 
Twice now?

Planes, trains, and automobiles are all booked.
We leave in less than a month.

On our trip I might see things like this:













and possibly this:









I might marvel at these:













and definitely this:





If Michelangelo painted it, I will marvel at it.


I might do as the Romans do and toss a coin into this:




and I might just feel a little Irish, lean back and kiss this:






Whew... I'm exhausted just looking at all those pictures.  But it will be well worth it.

For someone with the Travel Bug, there is just no other option.  Pretty soon I will have my own pictures to post to this blog of all of these unbelievable sights.  I kind of can't believe it.

And.... I'm spontaneously combusting with excitement.


Clean up in Aisle 4,
Amanda