We’re off

Tuesday, June 1 marked the second leg of our journey.
We drove from Paul’s house in Caistor to the Doncaster airport to board a plane bound for Amsterdam.
Amsterdam is the first stop of a nearly 20-city tour Sam and I are taking around Europe.
We’re going to Cologne, Frankfurt, Munster, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Salzburg, Venice, Florence, Rome, Cinque Terre in Italy, St. Raphael in France, Interlaken in Switzerland, Paris, Angers, Bruges and Antwerp.
It’s exciting and very surreal at the same time.
A year ago Sam and I were making the final preparations for our wedding. Little did we know a year later we’d be spending our first anniversary in Europe.
To get around, we purchased a train pass that’s called a Eurail Global Flexi Pass.
The pass allows us to travel during any 15 days within two months, all in the first class cabin. So, for example, when we take our first train to Cologne, we will have used up one day of our 15.
We could have spent a little more and purchased a two-month pass that would have allowed us to travel any day within a two-month period, but those passes are meant for people traveling everyday.
That’s not us.
We’ve scheduled our trip to take a train to a city, stay there at least two nights and then leave for the next one.
This strategy will allow us to spend more of our time in various cities and less time on trains.
That’s not to say that the trains in Europe aren’t nice.
They definitely are.
As I’m writing this blog post, I’m sitting on a German Intercity Express train in a nice leather chair with acres of leg room.
You can’t beat that, especially if you’re used to the cramped space that comes with coach air travel.