First stop: Amsterdam

Greetings! We've just completed our first day as tourists in the lovely city of Amsterdam. I'm at an Internet cafe and running short on time, so I'll have to make this short, but hopefully we'll have more updates soon (and photos)!

Ok... We leave tomorrow... and am I packed??? no... of course not!!!!! That would be too easy :)

This is a picture of my bed... oh boy!!! When am I going to get to bed???

Well, I don't really have anything special to say... I just felt like this blog deserved a post since we are flying out at 1:15 tomorrow!!!! I'm still trying to convince myself that I'm going to be gone for 6 whole weeks... it just feels like a weekend trip or something!!!!!! I'm bringing my laptop for sure, so this blog will get updated pretty regularly... I hope!!!! We have our first 2 nights booked in Amsterdam (we still need a 3rd night somewhere) and 4 nights in Versaille.

ok... signing off now... stay in touch now ya hear?????

The Countdown

It's hard to believe, but our plane will be taking off for Frankfurt exactly two weeks from today. I think I'm asked "So, are you getting excited?" at least five times a day, whether it be from co-workers, friends, acquaintances or random people I don't even know. (I don't mind, by the way. And yes, I am excited!) Yesterday, I called to make a doctor appointment and encountered a surprisingly chatty receptionist who kept asking me questions about the trip. Somewhere in the conversation I mentioned that we were renting a car, which resulted in quite a bit of geographical confusion on her part:

"Wait. So you're driving to Europe?"

Now that would be an exciting trip.

Wilkommen!

Bethany here. Katie just added me as a contributor to this blog, so I thought I'd test it out. We're rapidly approaching the departure date for our six-week European tour and the excitement is building! We hope this site will allow you to share in our adventures as we journey through Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic. I'm sure we'll have plenty of stories to tell and photos to share along the way.

We just discovered a Web site last night - http://www.couchsurfing.com/ - that could prove to be a good resource during our travels. (Thanks for the tip, Jenny!) It's similar to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, but with the purpose of hooking travelers up with free housing from volunteer hosts. We'll probably be staying in a lot of hostels and possibly some campgrounds, but we're thinking that couch surfing could be a fun (and economical!) way to spend some nights and meet some locals. We'll let you know how it turns out.

The 3 Travelers!!!!

Here we are!!!! um... yeah... stay tuned for more!!!!