"Wings of Silver, Nerves of Steel"

We received our tickets in the mail yesterday. This is absolutely wild. All the planning over the last 10 months...all the excitement and uncertainty all encapsulated and printed onto these sturdy slips of paper. This is truly amazing...we're really doing this! There have been so many times where it looked like this trip wasn't going to happen at all, for a few different reasons. It went through so many changes, but ultimately, we're very happy with the itinerary we've put together. That's the best thing: we put this together ourselves. We found an excellent price by consulting several travel agents, we researched all the places we're going to stay, eat, visit, etc. We put the budget together ourselves. We created this trip whole cloth ourselves. It really is an amazing feeling. It's a little bit nerve-wracking, sure, but the fact is, this could be one of the greatest things we do in our lives. Yeah, it's a big undertaking, but as a wise man once said, "go big or go home!"

A note about our travel agent: we spoke to a few different travel professionals, both on the internet and conventional brick-and-mortar companies. We settled on Air Brokers International. They're a company that specializes in around the world travel for people on a budget. They got us the best price on the most destinations. We literally had one other travel agent say to us "I don't know how Air Brokers was able to get that price!" Our sales rep, Kristina, was wonderful to deal with. She did a yeoman's job in helping us for several months. We must have changed the trip on her a thousand times, even as recently as two weeks ago! She never lost patience with us (ok, maybe in private, but she never let us see it), and was more than accommodating throughout all our spastic idiocy. For those of you who may be planning a trip around the world, you can do worse than clicking the link above and sending in an inquiry. We had a great experience with them.

For the people who have been a bit confused about how long we are going to be away for, we depart for Amsterdam the night of March 28th, and we return to Boston the night of May 15.