As I find myself typing this from my hometown of Fountain Valley, CA, I realize how quickly life can change. A week ago, I was frantically packing for the first leg of my grand voyage. However, on Monday, May 13, just one day before I was scheduled to leave, my father called me with sad news that my grandmother had passed away. My grandmother has always been a central point of our extended family. Our family would often get together to celebrate special occasions. She’s always been a prominent figure in my life and it’s difficult for me to accept that she’s no longer with us. Consequently, I have postponed my trip in order to spend time with my family during this difficult period. However, this experience has not discouraged me from continuing with my dream; rather it has reinforced the knowledge that even at 85 years, life is short and that it is important to take all the opportunities you are given to make the most of it. Hopefully, you will follow along when we begin our journey even though it will be slightly delayed from our original plan. Best wishes.

People have been asking me recently about where we’re going.  While I have only a vague idea of all the places that we will be hitting in the next 1-2 years, I have a pretty good idea of where we’ll be going in the next 1 month or so.  Like last time we will be following the words of wisdom of our European travel guru Rick Steves’.  Check him out on PBS if you have time.  And if you are planning any trips to Europe I encourage you to pick up one of his guide books.  It is $20 well spent.

For our itinerary this time, we will be hitting the following cities (in this approximate order):

• Istanbul, Turkey
• Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Bled, Slovenia
• Plitvice Lakes, Croatia
• Split, Croatia
• Dubrovnik, Croatia
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• Budapest, Hungary
• Vienna, Austria
• Krakow, Poland

Can you spot the odd one out?  Is that a typo?  It’s not a typo, we are really going to Copenhagen, Denmark between Croatia and Hungary.  What?  It doesn’t make sense to you?  Well it doesn’t make sense to me either that it should be cheaper to buy an airplane ticket that goes from Croatia to Denmark, and Denmark to Budapest than to fly from Croatia to Slovenia to Budapest.  But cheaper it is and so to Denmark we go.

For those of you (like me) who are not good at geography, here’s a map:

Here’s our flight from Dubrovnik (DBV) to Budhapest (BUD) via Copenhagen (CPH). Yes, this was really cheaper!

We actually stopped in Copenhagen on our last visit to Europe, so we will only be staying over night.

I have decided to try to start blogging again in order to keep people up to date on where I’ve been and what I’m up to.  Hopefully I can write a blog entry for every new city we stop in and also post some pictures about what we’re up to.  Bryon will also be blogging (either here or at http://bryonross.com/blog).  Hope you will follow us along for the journey!

Valerie