And I'm off again...

Well, here we go again. It's 9 days (not that I'm counting) until I take off on my next international adventure. I don't know if it's possible for me to be more excited about this one! This trip was booked about 3 months ago, and has gone through lots of "versions" of the trip over the past few months.

It started when one of my best friends from here in Charlotte, Nicole, had a family wedding to attend in Italy in late June. When asked, I immediately said yes to tagging along and having an excuse to travel! We starting researching what else was going on in Europe during that same time frame, and came across The Yacht Week. I had heard of this before but never looked into it too much and wasn't sure it was "my thing". Then I watched the trailer on YouTube....

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_wC721zLZz4

Yeah, you're sold now too, right?

So, we booked our flights right away thinking the prices would increase if we didn't. We had decided to do some traveling around before and after TYW since we would be over there anyways. We booked flights heading into Brussels, Belgium a week before we needed to be in Croatia and leaving Prague, Czech Republic a couple days after getting off of the boat, giving us a grand total of 18 days of European vacation time. (This of course will use all of my vacation time for the year, meaning no planning new adventures until 2015 unfortunately.) 

A couple things didn't work out with Nicole's side of the trip and she had to switch around her flights to only make the week we would be in Croatia on TYW. bummer! But I was determined to have a great time, and of course wasn't going to give up my plans of traveling Europe! Eventually, I convinced my best friend - aka my Mom - and my Aunt Lanie to make part of the journey with me and I couldn't be more excited that they are coming!

The plan currently stands as (and hopefully won't change from this): 

Land in Brussels, Belgium on Saturday and spend on the afternoon exploring this city, eating Belgium waffles on the street and maybe sipping some Belgium beer! That evening we will take the fast train to Amsterdam! We will stay in Amsterdam for 2 nights and 1 day, then leaving for Paris on Monday morning. We have 3 full days of exploring Paris planned, which might be what I am most excited for. Then, Thursday morning we will fly to Venice, where I will have 24 hours to experience the entire city. No sleeping for this girl! Friday afternoon I will leave my mom and aunt and head to Split, Croatia. I plan on meeting up with fellow yacht weekers that night and maybe even start the craziness a night early. Saturday afternoon we find our boat, and hit the open water. Each day of TYW we will sail to different islands along The Croatian coastline, stopping in each for a night of fun. The boats heads back to Split on the final night, and we will be done on the following Saturday - I'm sure exhausted but also sad to be leaving. From there I will fly up to Prague to spend the last 3 days of my trip exploring what I have heard is an amazing city! 

I'll be sure to blog as much as I can between now and then and of course on my trip....any advice or suggestions for any of the cities I'm traveling to would be greatly appreciated. Come back for more if you want to read about this exiting adventure...