November 2-8 After Paris, we were excited to be somewhere a little smaller, a little quieter, and a little more chill--Bordeaux was absolutely perfect. We had booked our cat sit here months ago and didn't know what to expect. We had no idea how much we would love the city. We arrived in Bordeaux on Sunday night, but did not start our cat sit until Tuesday, so we were in a hotel for a couple of nights. After Paris, we were very excited to have a clean, comfortable place to sle

October 25-November 2 Bonjour! Before reading about our adventures in gay Paris, I thought a soundtrack may be helpful to set the scene. If you are a child of the 90s like me (or the parent of a child of the 90s, like I know many of you reading this are), you might understand why this song was stuck in my head all week. However, if you want something a bit more classic, you can't go wrong with dear Edith Piaf. Ok, now that we've set the scene... Paris is the quintessential Eu

October 19-24 Our journey to Belgium was our longest travel day yet. We woke up early in Berlin, said goodbye to Norman and Banana, and took the UBahn to the Hauptbahnhof just in time to see our scheduled 8:55 train was cancelled. This was the first time we've run into a travel problem like this, so we counted ourselves lucky and headed to the information desk to see what our options were. The kind woman at the desk said she could just transfer our tickets to the next train,

October 16-19 We got off our bus from Prague just as it was getting dark in Berlin. As we walked into the train station, I was relieved to find myself stumbling through German again--I could understand the signs! I could read the UBahn map! We were able to easily find the train we needed to take us to the lock box to pick up the key to the apartment where we were staying, which was conveniently just one more stop away on the train. Thanks to a thorough photo-guide from our Tr

October 15-16 Is anyone else getting whiplash from the number of cities we have visited in the past week? It has been amazing to see so much but I am looking forward to a bit slower going after this--we have several pet sits back to back in Belgium and France, which will allow us to stay in one place for a little longer at a time. For now, where did I leave off...the night train! We decided to take a night train from Kraków to Prague, partially because there was no way around

October 12-14 We arrived in Kraków as the sun was going down, so as we made our way from the central station to our hotel, we got to see the city light up around us. Neither of us quite knew what to expect in Kraków--Calvin has had the famous Wieliczka Salt Mine on his bucket list for years, and I knew my cousin Calen loved the city when she visited as a teenager, but beyond that we didn't have much to go on. As we walked the busy streets, both of us instantly fell in love. I

October 10-12 After our short return to Vienna we set off for Slovakia, the first country we have visited that neither of us has been to before. Bratislava, the capital, is a short train ride from Vienna--in fact, you can easily see Austria from the hill in the center of the city. Still, we arrived after dark and had to navigate the bus system in a new language, which was an interesting challenge. Fortunately, we easily made it to our hotel without any issues and found oursel

October 8-10 Vienna is just as beautiful as I remember. For those who don't know, I spent the spring semester of my junior year of college--January to May 2016--living in Vienna. I studied (and saw) opera, ate schnitzel and wurst, and got to go skiing in the alps. It was a truly amazing experience, but also a challenging one. Many of the other students in my program came from big, midwestern universities. I had gone from a small high school where I knew everyone in my class t

October 1-8, 2025 The last time I wrote I told you all about our whirlwind 24 hours in Glasgow with the lovely cat, Jake. Since then, we have been to an additional 3 countries, and I still haven't had time to fully process everything we saw and did in Edinburgh and Stirling. I apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience--between long travel days, iffy Wi-Fi, and all the experiences to be had, it is hard to find a minute to sit down and capture it all. On Wednesday, O

September 28-October1 This week has been an absolute whirlwind. As the title of this post suggests, after spending just over a week in a...

It has been a while since I have written an update--in fact, we have now been to 3 additional countries since I last wrote a post! I...

The last week has passed so quickly. Just last Monday we were saying our goodbyes to Chili and leaving Killarney. Today, we are in Wales...