France and Central Europe Trip: July-August 2010

Dear friends and family!
I hope this email finds you well! This update is loooong overdue- I have been meaning to write this for some time now, was even planning on blogging throughout our travels in central Europe, but time just seemed to slip away! So here now I sit, one week into this next leg of our journey, in our studio apartment in a very happening area of Stockholm, waiting for Josh to arrive in a taxi with all our luggage that has finally arrived- But i'm getting ahead of myself.


It seems like so long ago now but we left Nantes on the 27th of July in a rental car (the photo above is us in the main square in nantes, to the left is our dorm), after 1 full day + half a night of cleaning our place. There was a moment was I was even on my knees washing the floor (mom, Becky, Sean and Ian, you would have been so proud!).
We sent 7 pieces of luggage to Sweden (how did we have that much??) in a truck that one of josh's classmates organized.

For me, leaving Nantes was met with utter joy and elation as I could not wait to be far far away from that isolated campus and to finally have some time with Josh to just "be" without the stress of school.
But I did become quite the chef! Here is my baked brie with homemade cranberry chutney and our favorite strawberry spinach salad- I think that entire brie cost 5 euro? I will miss the cheese...

And speaking of food, we also managed to make our own sushi and got pretty good at it!

For Josh though I think leaving was a little more bittersweet as this meant another chapter of his Masters was closing, and he would again be leaving a place and a language he had come to know, just to have to restart in another month. But, there was no doubt that we were both very excited about our upcoming month of traveling and for Josh this was a much deserved month off.

We had to be in Stockholm on August 25th, so this left a month of exploring. We chose to drive around Northern France for a couple of days and then fly to Prague on Aug. 1st- From there we would explore the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Poland.

A common question i'm getting asked is "what was your favorite city", or what did you like best about this trip, and to be honest, that is so difficult to answer as it was all so wonderful and unique. So over the next couple of days i'm hoping to recount our "top 10" of each of the countries and show you some of our favorite photos.