Mommy Blogger Wannabe: Long overdue vacation post, #1

We've been back from vacation now for almost a month now and I've been MIA on this blog. My dad called me out this week for my lack of updates. I've been busy, catching up on work, DVR and cramming for a 1/2 marathon, but before I can jump into everything else that's been going on lately, our trip deserves its own post, better late than never.

First, lets start with Contiki. Contiki is a tour company that caters to our people - 18-35 year olds, not necessarily interested in 4-star accommodations, but more interested in sight seeing and fun. Early on, we settled on this as our company of choice so that we avoided a bus load of retirees as traveling companions. With a company that caters to younger people comes some "aggressive" itineraries. Ours was: London, Amsterdam, St. Goar, Munich, Innsbruck, Florence, Venice, Rome, Lucerne and Paris. Woah, right? This crazy list of places began with my mandatory: Paris, and Nick's mandatory: Rome. It then evolved into a bit of "let's see how many places we can see in two weeks, while including both mandatory places." Our thought was that we'd get a little taste of each place so that we can see where we'd like to come back to and where we could skip the next time around. If you want to see the places that we saw, please check out my pictures on Flickr. I think its more important to capture the EXPERIENCE that we had, rather than narrate the places that we visited. You can see those for yourself, and believe me, they are pretty much...awesome.

So. Let's begin at the beginning, shall we? Let's shall. For some reason I was having a hard time with the concept that WE WERE GOING TO EUROPE FOR TWO WEEKS. I blame a number of things on this state of mind, including, but not limited to: hormones, work schedule, a daunting to-do list, and a disbelief that we were actually about to embark on such an adventure. Thankfully, Nick really stepped up and helped with the laundry and the pre-vacation check list. I don't know what I would have done without him. After piles of laundry and a few to-do lists, the bags were packed, the light timers were set and the plants were watered and we loaded everything into the car to drive to my parent's house. (We decided to fly out of Pittsburgh because it was a little cheaper and it included free dog boarding and parking. Who can beat that?) The drive was uneventful except for a near-incident involving Chino demanding to sit in the front seat at the same time that I was holding two drinks and two value meals.

After a good night's sleep, we were off to the airport. Unfortunately the trip started out a bit shaky with a delayed flight to JFK, followed by an extraordinarily long flight. Unfortunately the delay and the extra long flight resulted in us missing our connection to London by FIVE MINUTES. Missing that flight caused us to have to wait in a line for two hours with some equally disgruntled people. Thankfully, I chose to kill the gate agent with kindness and we were re-booked on a British Airways flight for the next morning. Unfortunately this also resulted in a night at the Holiday Inn Express and our luggage staying in JFK instead of joining us in London.

I'm not going to lie, I almost cried when I found out that the luggage didn't make it. Don't get me wrong, I was pretty excited that WE made it to London, but really bummed that my carefully packed and coordinated bag didn't. We filled out our claim form and then made our way to the hotel, determined that this wouldn't ruin the trip. However, I must apologize to Nick because my mood on The Undergroud was so awful, that I wouldn't entertain any of his "Cockfosters" jokes throughout the entire ride.

We did manage to check two items off of the list. #1. Nick wanted to try a Guiness in London (not quite Ireland, but close). #2. Fish & Chips in a British Pub.