Heart of the Empire

They say that all roads lead to Rome, and mine is no different. I'll be spending four nights there at a hostel that's a bit off the beaten path, but the owners got really high marks for helping people plan out their visit based on how much time they have. It's about half an hour walk from the train station, and although I may disagree at the time, the exercise will do me good. After that it's on to Venice for a couple nights, and then to Greece by ferry... still need to get that part figured out. Money seems to be disappearing quicker than I'd like so I may have to call it quits after Greece (including another ferry out to Rhodes), but I'd really like to make it to Istanbul too; we'll have to see how things pan out. Who knows? Maybe one of my favorite fortune cookies ever--"A blonde from afar has something in store for you"--will come true, and I'll meet a sugar mama who'll let me travel more.

But what about...? Why aren't you going...? How can you not see...?

As you may have noticed already, and definitely will by the time I start posting from overseas, I'll be skipping over quite a few places in the countries I'll be visiting. My basic plan is for this to be the traveling equivalent of a world history class: covering little bits and pieces of as many areas as possible. On it's own, I'm not a huge fan of world history for exactly that reason... you never get to spend enough time covering any one topic/location. However, it does usually give you at least an idea of what areas you would like to focus on. Unless things in life go terribly wrong and I end up living in a van down by the river, this won't be my last trip to Europe, and I'm hoping that it will give me an idea of places that I want to spend more time in on my next visit.

On to the Continent

On September 26th I'll be leaving Dublin and arriving in Paris, to spend three nights. That's a day longer than I had originally planned on staying, but it doesn't look like the train ride to Munich is all that bad, so I'll head straight there afterwards and catch the last five days or so of Oktoberfest. As much as I enjoy beer and brats I think that many days of them would ruin me, so I plan on exploring the rest of Bavaria a bit as well. From there it's down into Switzerland to visit relatives and recuperate before crossing the Alps and invading Italy. No elephants will be involved, unfortunately.

Paris should be an interesting stop. I plan on skipping the Louvre, since I'm a fan of neither art (with a few exceptions) nor standing in line. The Eiffel Tower is a must... I love high places, although I'm always tempted to spit from them. I also plan on visiting Notre Dam and the Arc de Triomphe, and maybe the Moulin Rouge (hopefully that's the English language version) if I'm feeling especially brave/saucy.

Testing, testing

Attempting to publish a post by email via my nook, so I know if it's
possible during the parts of my trip where I don't have access to a
computer.