Why Europe for 9 weeks?
On June 8th, 2023, my hubby and I jumped on a plane to set off on a 9-week journey throughout Europe.
It took a lot of time thinking and planning what we wanted to do. In fact, we only recently bought our tickets back to Melbourne, Australia just a couple of days ago so we now know there will be an “end” to the trip.
But Europe to us meant a lot more than just a backpacking adventure.
Visiting Europe together has been on our bucket list for quite some time (during the 8 years we have been together) but life always got in the way so we never got to visit together.
Note: I’ve been to Europe once in 2014 but never with Slam!
We have been blessed with being able to travel to other places like New Zealand (pictured above) but haven’t made our way to Europe.
The times we tried to visit or move to Europe include:
2018 - We planned to visit Europe for a few weeks but Slam got promoted at work so we prioritised that instead
2019 - We were considering moving to Dublin, Ireland for a year or so in 2020 but we all know what happened in 2020 that set back our plans
2020 - 2022 - The world went into lockdown which meant Ireland halted their working holiday visa process. I spent my Melburnian 5-kilometre lockdown days refreshing the Ireland working holiday visa website to see if they would re-open their application process so we could apply.
2022 - We got married and decided we were too old (mainly Slam lol) to move abroad to work so we decided that it was probably best to just plan an epic trip instead of work abroad and then travel on the weekends.
There were lots of lockdown selfies taken during the global pandemic!
So here we are in 2023… FINALLY getting on a plane and living our best European life!
So where exactly are we going?!
Well, Slam gave me the green light to do whatever I wanted because he’s never visited before so I chose some of my favourite places to re-visit but also added a few touristy spots that Slam wanted to visit. And then we added some bucket list places we have been eyeing for a while!
This is a mini snapshot of some of the places on our trip.
The cities that stole my heart a decade ago include:
Lisbon, Portugal
San Sebastián, Spain
Cinque Terre, Italy
The cities on Slam’s “must visit” lists include:
London, United Kingdom
Paris, France
Rome, Italy
Berlin, Germany
Our bucket list places / new places we are super excited about:
Madeira, Portugal - Well, mainly me for this, Slam wanted to skip it but this place has been vomiting on my IG feed like crazy so I HAD to add it
Iceland!!!!! - We are super stoked with this one but unfortunately the Northern Lights won’t be dancing here during the summer… but heyo! I’m excited to experience 20+ hrs of sunlight, #nosleep
Norway!!!!! - There have been way too many pretty hikes shared on my friends’ IG these past few years…I had to add this to the list!
Dolomites - Another hiking destination… funnily enough, I completely forgot to add this destination in when I was mapping the route. I think it’s because I planned a LOT of hiking at other destinations so this was a lower priority. Regardless, looking forward to be surrounded by beautiful mountains. Ironically I put this place in as our “resting” spot in our itinerary.
The planning process also included me having to CUT a lot of dream destinations since we only have a limited amount of time away (and limited amount of money too, haha!). So here are some places that were originally on the list or were added at one point but then CUT!
Seville and Granada - these places looked so dreamy but I know I’ll come back for them in the future!!
Croatia - a DREAM but it will be too hot and crowded during the time we were going to be in that area (mid July-ish) so it’s been cut and saved for another time!
Greece - everyone told me to add this to the list but there were some spots that were crazy expensive and it was out of the way so goodbye!
Nice, France - I wanted to visit this since my last trip to Europe since it looked very “honeymoon-y” but it was also out of the way and didn’t work with the schedule
Brussels, Belgium - I mean, it’s still a contender as we will be visiting Berlin, Germany and other places so we might pop by for a bit but a lot of people told us to skip Belgium lol
Morocco - this place has been on my bucket list for a while. Damn those dreamy blue laneways. But nope, I crossed it off the list.
Turkey - hot air ballooooons! It was a bit out of the way and the hot air balloon experience was expensive!
As someone who has a YOLO-LET’S GO attitude, it was very hard to say “no” to the places listed above but I know we will return and visit some day in the future.
I mean, I tried my best to convince Slam to quit his job and extend our travels to a year or two but he wasn’t the biggest fan of that idea.
But for now, we are happy we have left the cold winters in Melbourne (yes, it gets cold there!!) and are off to live our hot, girl summer!!!
Note: I definitely didn’t lose any weight for this trip soooo I’m banking on the hiking trips and the amount of stress produced to help maintain my weight (HAHA).
Wish us good luck as we start our adventure!!!!
xoxo, knd.