Hit the Open Road: An Explanation

26. Start a Newlywed Map.
You can read about #26 here. I am absolutely in love with the end result.

27. Travel to at least 2 countries in Europe.
I really wanted to to make this 3 or 4 countries but when we discussed a trip to Europe, Andrew was very adamant about not trying to go too many places. I am a little disappointed, as this may be my only opportunity to travel to Europe, but agreed that two would be okay.

28. Travel to at least 4 different cities for weekend getaways.
Note that this item doesn't have to be out-of-state cities, though that would be much preferred. It just has to involve us staying at least one night outside of the twin cities. My guess is that most of these will end up being somewhere in the state of Minnesota.

29. Travel out of state 3 times.
Once again, I wanted the number of times to be greater, but with us traveling to Europe this year it is probably not possible. We've talked about visiting New York and Chicago, and possibly Arizona, so hopefully we end up hitting at least one of those places.

Paris, Je T'aime

Well, it's official. Andrew and I will be going to Europe in September 2010!

We've been discussing a trip to Europe for some time now, and we decided that we would go after Andrew passed his fifth Actuarial Exam, as the trip would basically be covered financially by the bonuses he would receive.

He took the exam on November 4, 2009 and for the past 2 months we have been on the edge of our seats waiting for the results. We tried not to talk about the trip much, since it is the hardest of all of the tests and we knew there was a chance he wouldn't pass. Well, the results came back on Friday and he passed!

We have decided our trip will consist of lengthy stays in both France and Italy. I was hoping to hit a few more spots (mainly Germany), since who knows when we'll ever get back, but we decided two will keep us plenty busy without feeling strapped for time in either place.

We spent some time at the library today looking through travel books, thinking about the places we want to go and the sights we want to see. We happily left the library with a couple of books about France and one on Tuscany. We continued the initial research at Noodles & Co (did you know you can get wine there?) followed by dessert at Sebastian Joe's.

There's a lot more research to be done, and we still need to settle on dates, but I am so close to making my Paris dreams come true that I am practically bouncing off the walls. Can't September come any sooner?