A Very Lucky Girl

To refresh your memory, our flight from Prague to Amsterdam was cancelled so we were en route back to London to make sure we would make our flight on May 1st. We landed at London Stansted Airport shortly after midnight, which really shouldn't even be considered a London airport seeing as it's 40 miles outside of London proper. At this point all public transport into London had stopped running and the first train was scheduled to depart at 5:30 AM. We were exhausted, starving, and freezing. We addressed the middle problem first. Burger King was the only open restaurant in the facility so we begrudgingly got in line. Jordan's nuggets appeared as though they had been sitting in a warmer since 8 AM and my burger was doused in mayonnaise to the point of in-edibility. We managed a few bites before focusing on our next problem: exhaustion.  Since Stansted was so far outside of London we weren't able to get a hostel and resigned ourselves to an airport slumber party for 2....

Our journey to Budapest started out relatively rocky. Keep in mind that we speak zero Italian. We arrived at the train station early (per usual) and scanned the board for our departure platform. Our first train was heading to Bologna, Italy where we would then board our night train. Underneath the platform listings we saw a running header that listed Firenze, Venezia and Bologna as places with cancelled trains (at least, that's what I thought it said...). We went straight to the customer service desk and took a number, wanting to confirm before properly panicking. I have never in my life been so happy to be wrong.  We located the platform and boarded our non-cancelled train at 8:20 PM with no issue. We were scheduled to arrive in Bologna at 10:35 PM with 22 minutes to catch our connecting train. However, our train from Rome ended up slowing down and we pulled into Bologna at 10:45 PM. We had 12 minutes to find our next platform. We bounded off the train and the race was o...

We arrived in Nice on Monday evening around 8 PM and quickly located our hostel just two blocks down from the train station. We checked into Hostel Baccarat  and a very kind man that we think was the owner upgraded us from our 10 bed dorm to a private room at no extra charge. After the day we spent dealing with the train delay in Paris our voyage was looking up! We rode up in the world's smallest elevator, tossed our backpacks in the room, and marveled at the attached private bathroom before heading downstairs in search of food.We stopped at the front desk again to ask for a map and restaurant suggestions. The nice man drew a line down the main street and told us to walk all the way down it until we reached the restaurants. We thanked him and headed out into the nice Nice night.  After taking a couple of wrong turns we found ourselves on the main avenue, but couldn't see a hotbed of lights and activity at the southern end. Instead, we stumbled into the nearest Mcdonald'...

We woke up in London early Sunday morning and took ourselves and our packs to Kings Cross St. Pancras train station. Our Eurostar train was scheduled to depart at 8 AM. We settled into our reserved seats and arrived in Paris at 11:47 AM after entering another time zone. We were now 7 hours ahead of our family in Oklahoma. Zee, my friend from the study abroad program in Dundee, met us at the Gare du Nord train station. He was our tour guide for the afternoon and he absolutely crushed it. First order of business was ditching the packs at our hostel, Smart Place Paris , which was just a few blocks away from the Gare du Nord train station. We grabbed sandwiches and cheese at a nearby Monop before taking the metro to the Eiffel Tower for a picnic lunch. Along the way we stopped at the Champs-Elysees for the Arc De Triomphe and my one request: an authentic french baguette that I promptly chomped into.  We found a shady spot at the Eiffel Tower and devoured our lunches while catc...

Our journey began bright and early on Thursday, April 19th. Per usual, airport security at Will Rogers took approximately 7 minutes and we quickly found our gate by 5:30 AM. Our initial flight was delayed by a couple of minutes, an omen of what was to come. Keep in mind that this was Jordan's first flight EVER and we were flying Southwest Airlines to Denver. Just the day before social media was inundated with the story about the woman who died on a Southwest flight when the window popped open. I nervously hoped Jordan hadn't watched the news. She had. However, our flight was uneventful and Jordan took 8 billion pictures of the wing outside of her window seat.  We landed in Denver at 7:30 AM and made breakfast at Chick-fil-A our first priority. Starbucks was my next stop as we struggled to stay awake. Our flight to London didn't leave until 2 PM so we had loads of time to kill. Around the lunch hour, we grabbed a sandwich at Subway and filled up our water bottles in pre...

My sister-in-law and I recently returned from a 13 day adventure around Europe and I couldn't think of a better avenue to share our experience. We both received a multitude of questions of how we planned, executed the plan, and saved $$ for the plan. Do you sense a "plan" theme? Stay tuned, not very much actually went according to plan once we were in motion.  Jordan and I talked on and off about making this trip a reality, but it honestly came together fairly spontaneously. Jordan ordered her passport in January and we booked our trans-Atlantic flights in February, with only about 2 months to go. We decided on April 19th through May 1st, strategically celebrating Jordan's 23rd birthday in the middle! Once dates were selected, destination decisions were made. With this being Jordan's first out of country trip (and her very first flight!), I wanted her to pick most of the places. I had 2 places on my wish list: Nice, France and Budapest, Hungary. After stud...

Last weekend I ventured off to London, England with Kiera, a friend who hails from Ontario. In the days leading up to the flight I played Joey Tribbiani's voice saying "London, baby!" over and over again in my head.  We took the train to Edinburgh on Thursday afternoon because most flights to major cities leave from Edinburgh for the cheapest price. Our flight left at 6:20 AM on Friday so we stayed with Kiera's family on Thursday evening. We read books to young Kate before turning in for bed around 8:30 PM without shame. Our cab was scheduled to come for us at 4:45 AM.  The ride to the airport is a blur and we both passed out on the flight. We arrived at Gatwick airport, south of London. Our welcome included completely armed security personnel meandering with AK47s and dogs. We exchanged glances and hurried to the train station.  We sat on a train for an hour before it decided to begin moving, due to a broken down train north of the station. We finally left Gatwi...