Friday, February 20, 2009

Buying the bare essentials...

Row and I had been in the REI store like an hour and I knew that even though he wasn't complaining, my time was running out. After all, his whole interest in coming had died the moment he saw that once again, the unknowledgable GPS man was staffing the area today.

“Do you like this brand?” I asked, pointing to some travel underwear, and trying to hurry my last few decisions. Forking out twenty bucks per pair of underwear, after all, is not something that should be done hastily.

His lips poofed out and he bobbed his head slowly in a confusing confirmation.

“Are they comfortable?” I figured specifics might help the answer.

“Well they dry fast.”

“Oh.” So nix on travel underwear brand 1. I mean, how much should drying capacity outweigh comfort? It's not like I'm planning on wetting my pants—they'll have all night to dry when I wash them.

I finally decided on travel underwear brand 2, and I can testify right this moment that they are comfortable. Perhaps I'll take them into the shower with me tonight, and by dawn's early light find out whether or not I've made a big mistake.

So I bought a backpack

















Yes, it was time. After shopping the market for some weeks I finally settled on a sleek, aerodynamic, high-mileage pack that will transport my life through the urban jungle we know as Europe. It has a pretty good payload, an excellent variety of pockets, and a rain fly with enough water protection to take it snorkeling. Okay, maybe not. All in all, I think I'm ready to trust my earthly belongings to it's care.

Thank you Deuter for making the Futura Pro 42 Fire/Granite model. I'll keep it close.

k.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

A Roming we will go...

Just booked a ticket for four from Glasgow, Scotland to Rome, Italy for $206. Not too shabby... AND this means we get to spend Easter in Rome! OK... so it's not quite like being in the Holy Land, but this is the place to be in Europe I should think. Kudos to Kirsten for realizing that April 12th was Easter...

R

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Thanks to Google

So I just spent 3 hours trying to figure out where we're going and how we're getting there. I did get the rough trip outline up and started looking into housing etc. I think I need approval from the sibs before I go too much farther or start booking lodging, etc... There's lots of cool places out there, it's just a little hard to find them all.

I would like to thank Google, the sponsor of this fine blog, for their amazing travel planning tools. I've successfully toured all of Europe via Google Maps today and managed to get most of our stuff into a fabulous Google Calendar. Someday I'll figure out how to link those from here and it'll be amazing.

New favorite European travel sites:
http://www.ryanair.com
http://www.directferries.co.uk/
http://www.hihostels.com/web/index.en.htm

R

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Post #1

So today we decided to start the blog for our trip. Unfortunately, we soon ran into problems as one of the very first things you are required to do when starting a new blog is to come up with a name and URL. After some rather intense deliberation we settled on The Four Bohemians for several very good reasons:
1. We are Bohemian. Deep down inside and way back on my mother's side there is a seed of Bohemian in each one of us. Yes... we are Bohemian.
2. Dictionary.com provides many definitions of Bohemian, one of them being "gypsy." This fits well for the trip on which we are about to set out: 36 days, 10 countries, lots of miles, small backpacks, no money, and uh... four of us.
3. Another definition for Bohemian was "a person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices" and that just made us feel good.

So... here we are, The Four Bohemians, about to set out on yet another crazy adventure, except this time we'll all be together!

Rowan