Western Europe Peregrination
In and around Europe
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This summer, Taylor and I will be traveling Western Europe from the dates of June 3rd to July 11th of 2007. The trip is acting as a particular buffer between our college life, and future graduate studies as well as professional careers. Our purpose and objective of the journey is to relax, soak up as much culture as possible, bath in the sun, meet many fine people, eat great food, explore new places, party, get lost, take great pictures, make lasting memories, expand our minds, drink lots of wine, pretend to understand the languages, stand in awe, take soccer too seriously, grow our relationship with each other and hopefully, learn something about life along the way. But most of all, we are doing it to let loose and have fun! Throughout the six weeks we will be exploring England, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Austria. We chose Western Europe as our destination because of the vast amount of cultures to explore in such a small geographic locale and equally because of the excellent (and fairly inexpensive) transportation infrastructure that Europe graciously offers. Our intention is to update our blog as often as possible so that all of our friends and family can observe our progress as we frisk around. We will write a blog for each day and upload the most fascinating pictures from our new Nikon SLR camera for everyone to view. This blog will also feature a map powered by Google Earth that will track our location; this will be a viewable item to all users and will provide the ability to view satellite images of the locations we are in. Below, listed, is our entire itinerary which Taylor and I will be updating frequently. In an effort to consolidate our time online, we would also like this blog to be a portal of communication between us and everyone we know as it is going to be impossible to call everyone because of cost and e-mail everyone because of time. We encourage everyone to leave postings on our blogs where we will be able to correspond. To post a comment, greeting, or question to us on this blog, you will find a box labeled "Add your comment or question" in each day of the itinerary.
Please join us on this blog and wish us safe passage.
Best of health to everyone,
Shaun and Taylor
Route taken and entries by Real Traveler Shaun&Taylor
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Day 1 - New York, New York - June 3
Well, we made our flight. It was, however, a very close call...On the way to pick up Shaun, my father and I ran into about 40 minutes w... Continue reading » -
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Day 2 - London, England
We arrived safely in London at around 7:30am, surprisingly well rested. After frantically searching for our bags, we made our way to the... Continue reading »
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Day 3 - Barcelona, Spain - June 5
At 8:30 AM our alarm went off to warn us of the free breakfast that was awaiting us...it was shut off and we slept until one o´clock.
We too... Continue reading »
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Day 4 - Barcelona, Spain - June 6
Hi everyone! We´re so excited to see your posts, we´re enjoying our adventures but missing you all terribly. It has definitely sunk in by now that... Continue reading »
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Day 5 - Barcelona, Spain - June 7
We started off the day by walking to las ramblas, once again, to eat breakfast and upload our information to the blog at the internet cafe. While w... Continue reading »
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Day 6 - Madrid, Spain - June 8
We arrived in Madrid at 7:30 AM from our overnight train without any quality sleep. Our chairs converted to beds, however, it was still very uncomf... Continue reading »
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Day 7 - Malaga, Spain - June 9
We woke up this morning at 8 am and packed our bags for the train ride to Malaga at 12:20 pm.
We still had time to explore more of Madrid so... Continue reading »
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Day 8 - Malaga, Spain - June 10
For our first full day in Malaga we decided to enjoy the beautiful beaches of the coast of Spain. After laying out for a few hours we went home to... Continue reading »
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Day 9 - Gibraltar - June 11
Today we decided to utilize our car and take a day trip to Gibraltar, which was nice because it was gorgeous and they also speak fluent English. We to... Continue reading » -
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Day 10 - Malaga, Spain - June 12
We planned today to be one of relaxation. We ate breakfast in our apartment and went to the computer to update the blog. Taylor checked her e-mail... Continue reading »
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Day 11 - Granada, Spain - June 13
Hi everyone! Today we visited the city of Granada. It was about a 2 hour drive from Malaga, however it was worth the haul- we got to see the beautiful... Continue reading » -
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Day 12 - Malaga, Spain - June 14
Today was another day of relaxation. We first went to the mall nearby to buy another converter because ours broke. We then went to the beach and la... Continue reading »
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Day 13 - Malaga, Spain - June 15
Today was also a day of relaxation, except we spent today at the pool rather than the beach (we know, this backpacking thing is pretty harsh)... after... Continue reading » -
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Day 14 - Malaga, Spain - June 16
So here´s today´s story: we thought our timeshare was booked until Sunday morning- turns out we only had it until 10am this morning. Our plan was t... Continue reading »
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Day 15 - Milan, Italy - June 17
(June 16 arrival) We arrived in Milan after a short plane ride from Malaga. We spent a lot of time in the airport in Milan because the luggage was... Continue reading »
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Day 16 - Venice, Italy - June 18
We arrived in Venice by train at about 9:30 at night. When we got off the train we were immediately greeted by the magnificent waterways of Venice!... Continue reading »
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Day 17 - Venice, Italy - June 19
After sweating for 8 hours, waking up every half hour to bells, we got out of bed, took cold showers, and got ready to explore Venice! On our walk... Continue reading »
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Day 18 - Venice, Italy - June 20
We slept today until 10, as late as we could because of checkout, to catch up on the lost sleep from the adventure last night. We found a cool place t... Continue reading » -
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Day 19 - Florence, Italy - June 21
Today, we had a full day to explore Florence. We saw an advertisement for horseback riding in Tuscany which anyone would love to do but we decided aga... Continue reading » -
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Day 24 - Lyon, France - June 27
Placeholder- Not yet visited Continue reading » -
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Day 25 - Lyon + Tours (Loire V.) - June 28
We slept in late today because there wasn't much else to see in Lyon and almost missed our train to Tours via Paris. When we arrived in Tours after ab... Continue reading » -
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Day 26 - Tours, France - June 29
Last night we didn't sleep at all because our bed was so uncomfortable and we had to wake up early to catch our tour of the Chateaus at 9. We packe... Continue reading »
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Day 27 - Paris, France - June 30
We woke up late today because we both didn't sleep very well in our hotel room. We headed out into Paris at about 12 pm. Our first stop today was the... Continue reading » -
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Day 30 - Brugges, Belgium - July 3
Well, I'm not even sure where to begin except that Brugges is our favorite city visited thus far!
Our Brugges experience began w... Continue reading »
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Day 31 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - July 4
We arrived in Amsterdam on July 3rd to find our hotel somewhere in the red light ditrict very near to the train station. We booked this hotel becau... Continue reading »
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Day 32 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - July 5
We woke up this morning early, as we had an early check out. A bit tired from our adventures last night we decided to have a leisurely breakfast... Continue reading » -
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Day 33 - Munich, Germany - July 6
We arrived in Munich at 7:30 in the morning pretty tired from the previous night train and Shaun came down with a stomach bug that he had to figh... Continue reading » -
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