Euro Trip '05

Most adventures start with a single dream. Mine was to go back to Europe, but this time with my best friend and without a tour group.

The first time I traveled over to Europe was back in '97 with my grandmother and cousin. We traveled through Portugal, Spain, Morocco and Gibraltar. It was a great way to get my feet wet traveling abroad. Although right off the bat I felt out of place stuck in a large bus with thirty plus people. I had more fun during the free times walking around solo or with a smaller group.

For my next trip I wanted to try the backpacking/vagabond way. So in '04 I started researching as much as I could about backpacking around Europe. I had always enjoyed watching the Rick Steves' programs so I checked out a bunch of the videos and his books from the local library and started planning out my adventure. My best friend was just getting out of the Marines and after two tours in Iraq he was ready for a fun backpacking adventure. I had figured two months should just about do us for all the places I wanted to see. The only for sure date I set was for June 6th; I wanted to make sure I was in the Normandy area of France for the sixty first anniversary of the Normandy landings (D-Day). Besides that our time frame was mostly open.
We ended up traveling through Netherlands, Germany, France, Austria, Czech Republic, Switzerland and England during May-July 2005.
During this trip I kept a notepad for a journal. I have yet to type it all up, but my pictures from this trip can be seen on my Flickr page.
I will post some highlights and my journal entries once I have them all typed up.