My Travel Rules

I went on a little 36 hour road trip this weekend back to my alma mater (can I say that? ...alma mater... It's weird) DeSales University to see a fiddler on a roof or something. While I was there, all of my friends were like "Thomson, what are we going to do for the three weeks while you're away?! How will we reach you?" [insert melodramatic swooning gestures as my friends worry about how empty their lives will be without me]. And I was like, it's ok! I have a blog!


Now, being the Type A person that I am, I have specific travel rules about communicating with the rest of the world while I'm on vacation. First of all, Whitney and I will not be technology-free in Europe -- we aren't that crazy -- her phone will have international calling, but my phone is going to be more useful as a paper weight than an actual form of communication for the next three weeks. Whitney is also bringing her computer and I'll have an iPod, both of which I shall use for blogging purposes...and not much else. My rules are as follows:

1. I don't check social media. Sorry Facebook, but there is a reason I left the United States and it has a little bit to do with needing a break from my 500 "friends." The same goes for Twitter and Instagram (at least, it would if I had an instagram, which I do not).
2. I don't check my email. Emails are a lot like Facebook and Twitter, except longer and more important; it's where people talk to me about grown-up things. The email rule is flexible but I did set up an auto-reply message that is all cute and diplomatic about me being away on vacation and I set it up to start a day before I leave and continue an extra day after I get back (because I'm a bad ass).
3. I will reply to messages posted on my blog when I can. I'm going to be six hours ahead of you guys, you will literally be writing to me from the past and this time-space continuum stuff is messing with my brain, so if I see a comment, I will attempt to respond (unless it's dumb, in which case, I will politely ignore it to save you some dignity).
4. I write this blog as if no one is actually reading it, because then I don't get my hopes up that people actually care and I also think it's a little bit funnier when you do it that way. Don't get offended by that! I'm going to write things that are way, WAY worse than that, so if you're going to be upset over my writing style, you should probably get out now. With that being said, studies have shown that people who read my blog are wittier, smell better, have nicer hair and are more likely to get souvenirs than non-blog readers.
5. BONUS RULE - Even though I'm Type A, rules are meant to be broken, so if you're absolutely lost without me and you must speak with me, leave me a comment that tells me to check my email. (You should probably write me an email as well, cuz just commenting like that would be weird).

I think those are all of my rules, but I also have a tendency to make this stuff up as I go along, so if I do come up with something else, I'll be writing about it.

I've spent the entire day coming up with itineraries and schedules. I'm not great with planning stuff like hotels and travel arrangements, but I know how to plan out an awesome day. Although, with that being said, I'm still not done.

My current key to planning is actually to plan in time for surprises. There is so much to see and I'm usually one to want to see it all, but I refuse to be stressed out about trying to schedule perfect moments or miss out on certain opportunities because I'm determined to see everything on my list.

I've already been told that I have "to get lost in Venice," both by a friend and by a few guide books and having looked at a few maps of Venice, I can already tell that I won't have to try to do that, but I'm taking that thought process with me to each of the places I'm visiting -- except for Rome, because I was specifically told that that was NOT a good idea.

Hemingway Tours Incorporated

Ernest Hemingway was a cool guy. He was also two big buckets of crazy, but we don't need to talk about that. The dude went everywhere. Before planning this trip, I knew about his house in Key West and the famous Hemingway cats (he had such an affinity for polydactyl cats -- cats with extra toes -- that they are now commonly referred to as "Hemingway cats" and something like 42 of these cats continue to roam his home in Key West -- which has been turned into a museum -- freely), I did not, however, truly understand the scope of his European presence.

I knew that Hemingway had spent an incredible amount of time in Paris -- one of the hubs for the Lost Generation -- and that that's where he met F. Scott Fitzgerald and numerous other writers who we all suffered through in high school or a freshmen lit. course in college but will undoubtedly come to appreciate in twenty years or something when we realize what a luxury reading books is. France was not his only haunt though -- he also spent years in Italy and Spain and all of these places heavily influenced his writing. As I am reading my guide books and trying to create itineraries that maximize my travel time in each city, I'm discovering just how many places boast about their connections to Hemingway. Whitney has already told me that we are not traveling through Europe based on famous writers and where they liked to have breakfast or where they once brushed their teeth, but I have realized that there is probably a market for big, old nerds like me.

This revelation has led me to do some serious Google searches where I have discovered that no one has taken advantage of this niche market. I figure that people take Shakespeare tours all around Europe to see the places he wrote about, so why not Hemingway tours? I could make bank just taking people around France, Italy and Spain to give them a full Hemingway experience.

But, in all seriousness, welcome to Hemingway Tours Incorporated.

One Week Left!

The title of this post is pretty self-explanatory. We leave one week from today!! Glorious.

The Fault in Our Travel Plans

If you have any awareness of pop culture, and especially if you're a preteen girl, you know that the movie adaptation of John Green's insanely popular novel, The Fault in Our Stars, hits screens tomorrow. Or, if you're me and you go to an advance screening, then it was tonight.

Movie review and spoilers aside, this movie is about two kids with cancer who end up falling in love and it's tragic and poetic and happy and sad and absolutely everything else you could want in a YA novel. So, why am I writing all about this on my travel blog? Because part of their love story takes them across the Atlantic and straight into the heart of Amsterdam.

Do I intend to reenact the novel while abroad? No, I do not, because it was sad and I'm going with my sister and not my "not-boyfriend" (spoiler alert: he quickly becomes her boyfriend). There is also a scene where our two young friends make out in the Anne Frank house and I really don't intend on doing that on this trip or ever BUT, in all seriousness, it has officially made the waiting even harder.

This movie was an emotional rollercoaster (it is not, as one character says "A rollercoaster that only goes up" because this thing dives, twists and flips for exactly 2 hours and 10 minutes), but in between her tears, Whitney leaned over to me and said "17 days," and if that just isn't the coolest thing I've ever heard, then I don't know what is.

Our Homes Away From Home

We are not so homeless anymore! We are still slightly homeless in Rome and Naples, but we have booked hostels in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin and Venice.

Not going to lie, it was (and continues to be in the case of Rome and Naples) a pretty stressful process and isn't really helped by the fact that we're trying to book these places so close to our actual trip, but it feels really good to know that we have some place to stay. I think we found some really nice hostels too, so I'm really excited (wait...when am I not excited?).

I'll write when I have found somewhere to stay in Rome and Naples...or maybe I'll never write and will just end up spending the last week of my trip wandering through Italy, begging for shelter...

"Hi. Do you speak English?" -Whitney on an international call to France. Cool story, bro.