going for sure

I'm excited! We bought the tickets for our trip to Europe. It was less than $1500 for the both of us! SWEEET! I've spent more getting myself to the Philippines. It's our first time to Europe. We still don't know where we are staying, except for a rewards card hotel stay in France, just when we're getting there and when we're getting back. So if you know of good decent hotels in London or Madrid with private baths, leave a comment.

We thought about stopping in New York or Washington DC on the way back, but just couldn't resist the direct flight deal. Oh well, we'll get back to the east coast another time.

Emailed my cousin and some friends who we will visit then.

Some things we hope to do when we're there:
-see Les Miserables in London. The hubby has never seen it and it's one of my favorite musicals.
-go to the various museums
-eat lots of good food and drink good wine
-check out the Spanish lechon
-riding the train from London to Paris to Madrid (I love train travel)

When I travel, I usually look for things I might be interested in doing, but for the most part for sure plan where we're going and where we are staying and everything else in between we figure out from there. I mean, you may end up running into something you didn't know was happening. That's happened to me alot before and the trip ends up being something I could have never planned otherwise.

I'm finishing my french 2 class and picked up additional Berlitz tapes and readers to continue with the conversational practice on my own for the next few months. I can read a decent amount to get the gist, and write it with some work, but having it spill out of my mouth is another story. I suspect it'll be another 3-4 years of active study to get to that point.

The hubby will be taking pictures throughout the trip. Though some of them will be the "vacation pictures" the other half will probably be more of his art portfolio. So we'll see what kind of eye on Europe we'll bring back. We hope to make some of them into art prints or maybe have them shown at a cafe or something.

I'm checking to see if there are any dojos or martial arts schools that I can stop by to visit, maybe even teach a class or something. Sure, why not?