Ramblings of a Thirty-Something

Welcome back, friends! Readers! Facebook acquaintances! You've made it to part 2 of this mini-series on travel. If you missed part 1, you can read that here . In this post, I am going to talk about the various ways I plan my trips, specifically focusing on last spring break and my upcoming spring break. Since my last post, I have booked my airfare, my accommodations, and have a massive  list going of things I want to do/see. I know. It's pretty exciting. Throughout my life, I have planned trips in different ways. Some were hypothetical trips my siblings and I planned while looking at a road atlas and taking note of the special locations marked {that's how we ended up at Neil Armstrong's house, by the way}. When I was in college preparing for my student teaching abroad and the various trips that came with it, I consulted travel guides. I still love perusing those in book stores... But nowadays, I go to the internet. Just like everybody else. But maybe not like...

This post is the first of a pair that I have been wanting to write for quite some time. Like a mini-series, but with only two editions. Or one of those episodes with the TO BE CONTINUED at the bottom of the final scene. For a *tiny* bit of background {I swear, I'm going to try to keep this brief}, last year on Spring Break, I took a trip to Massachusetts. My grad school break and my 4th-grade-teacher break were the same week. I had always wanted to go to Boston, and when I started doing some random pinning on Pinterest, I found out some interesting things I hadn't known. Lexington and Concord are not that far from Boston {which I think I knew from history class and also a random episode of Liberty's Kids , but the distance between the two locations never clicked until I actually looked at a map}. Salem is not that far from Boston. Plymouth is...a little far, but definitely doable {said the Midwesterner}. I'll dig more into that part in the second post. And on a whim, ...

Real quick on non-blog related things:  I am SUPER RIDICULOUSLY PROUD of my Scholastic Bowl team!!!! We won regionals last night by the skin of our teeth  {literally, we were relying on a team we had just beat that was seeded last in the regional to beat a team we had lost to in an earlier round just to stay in the running}! Then two tiebreaker matches, which my kiddos destroyed, and then finally our championship round against a team we'd never played who we remembered as being very good the previous year. And we won. And I wanted to cry, because this team is made up of kids who are super-involved and yet so incredibly dedicated and really played their hearts out...and now I sound sappy and cliche, but that's okay. Because they did something amazing and deserve to be proud of themselves. Ahem...okay, so now, let's move on to London  again. Our second day in London was, as the title suggests, rainy. Thank goodness we had bought umbrellas in Munich. Our first stop--our...

I did it, folks. I braved the hazardous conditions {i.e., the farm machinery and steep ladder} and ventured up into our barn to retrieve my journal. Now I can write about England. I'm super excited, too. Why? Because...I love London. It might be my favorite city of all time. Paris is, of course, beautiful and has this romantic mystery to it {which I've never actually experienced...I have a theory about this, though...and a future blog post in mind}. Salzburg is gorgeous and soooo  clean!  But London has my heart. Yes, the Underground is busy. Yes, people {as in any city} can be rude. But there's just something about London that I love. And I got to spend three days there this past summer! So let's get to it. To fully appreciate our exploits that first day in London, let me back up and set the stage. The night before, we had landed in Heathrow after spending our last day in Munich. We had to make it through all the passport fun-times and then get from He...

As I mentioned in my first post about Germany, our trip seemed to have a World War II theme, and many of the places on our trip were repeats from my first journey over the pond.  Except for our second day in Germany, that is. We were staying in Munich, which is not far from the Austrian border. I had visited Salzburg before {for all The Sound of Music  glory, of course}, but I had not made it to Berchtesgaden because it is closed during the winter months until May and the timing just didn't work out.  But Audra and I made a point to see Hitler's Eagle's Nest this time around. It only seemed fitting with the rest of our trip. We took the train from Munich to Berchtesgaden {and apparently overpaid for our tickets, according to the conductor on the train}. We had some time before our tour started, and so we walked around near the train station. Berchtesgaden is in the Bavarian Alps, and so we had some spectacular views as we waited for the tour to start. ...