coming back from vacation is a lot of work...

Phew! Put a kettle on, because I'm going to need a whole lot of caffine. We arrived from Frankfurt on Monday night after an 11 hour flight and I'm still suffering from jetlag (going to bed after midnight and waking up at 4am is not my idea of a good time), but it's all worth it. Our trip was amazing and filled with great art, great food and lots of adventure. I've got lots to share, but it will take some time to get organized. I've spent the past day uploading photos onto flickr, but I've only uploaded up to day 7 of our trip...and we were gone for 35 days. Oi!

europe, here i come!

We leave on Sunday for our trip to Europe and I can't wait. We managed to snag a super cheap flight to Frankfurt, so our super rough & very flexible itinerary goes like this: Frankfurt > Koblenz > Cologne > Luxembourg > Ghent > Bruges > Brussels > Antwerp > Amsterdam > some cycling around Holland > Berlin > Vilnius > Kaunas > Frankfurt > Vancouver. Phew! Not bad for 35 days of travel!


We plan on traveling super cheap and we will be couch surfing at least one third of the time (we already have our first night in Frankfurt and our next 2 nights in Cologne set thanks to CS). Free sleeps, how about that! We also will be traveling light. I guess after doing some bike touring I realize that traveling light is the way to go. So last night we bought a great carry-on pack at MEC and so far it seems pretty amazing. Cornelius has packed his already and will only be bringing 7 pounds of clothes and toiletries. I'm thinking of bringing an extra pair of shoes, which will tip my bag at 9 pounds! Maybe before I leave I'll post a list of what exactly will be in my pack.

budget travel

I'm started to get excited for our 5 week trip to Europe. We haven't booked a flight yet (tho I'm hoping we can find something this week) and we haven't decided whether our roundtrip ticket should fly from Vancouver to London or Amsterdam. We'll let our cheap-ass budget decide! Accomodations are another matter. We're not booking anything other than our first night's stay in advance, and while that's never been a problem anywhere we've travelled in North America (where we never book anything in advance), Europe may be a bit crazier. But I'm sure things will be fine (I hope!) and we've registered with CouchSurfing.com so we can sleep on stranger's couches for free!

If anyone has any tips for good food, good shops, galleries, museums, and good (cheap) accomodations in London, Belgium (Brugge, Antwerp, Brussels), The Netherlands (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Haarlem), Berlin, and Lithuania (Vilnius) leave me a comment!

I wish however we were going to Austria because if we were, we'd definitely stay at the das park hotel (via poppytalk) where rooms are built out of old drainage pipes. The beds and sheets are provided, showers and toilets are served by the surrounding public space and you pay what you can. I love it!