Excuse Me, Life!

It's hard to believe I've been back in the states for a little more than two weeks now. I've had a lot of people ask me how I made this trip happen. So here it is: 17 days... 4 countries... 5 cities... $3,000... with no help from a travel agency or booking tours. DESTINATIONS First came the destination planning. With Sarah living across the world in Prague we went back in forth for a while on ideas and looking up costs. We had a list of places we would like to visit and the flight costs are what made the choices for us. Prague, Czech Republic Venice, Italy Malta - tiny island country amidst the Mediterannean Sea  Madrid, Spain Pamplona, Spain We actually added Pamplona pretty last minute. We knew we wanted to experience the world's Mardi Gras AKA San Fermin Festival Running of the Bulls, but the flights were outrageous. Originally we would be in Madrid for about four days. Then we realized it was only a five hour bus ride away from Pamplona and went for it....

Venice has been wonderful. The weather was so hot and I'm leaving with sunkissed shoulders. It only rained one evening and my flip flops made me keep slipping which resulted in me snorting from giggling so hard as people chuckled walking by. I then pranced around barefoot in the streets holding my flip flops.  We didn't plan every detail of our adventure for the purpose of just figuring things out as we go. It is a cool test of instinct and survival skills. Too often we live in comfort and are familiar with everything around us. Being in another country things are different at first but it has been easy adapting to how things are done here. When we got to the airport we found a bus to take us into the city. The next two hours consisted of getting lost in an attempt to find our hostel. Venice has so many twists and turns and it was like an adult playground and corn maze.  Thanks to some great friends who were just in Venice we had a few waterbus passes with us and they came in ...