You people are a curious bunch. You keep asking us “where to next?”. Geez, we just got to DR! Can we live in the moment, please?
Just kidding. If I didn’t already know what’s next, I’d be asking too. The short answer is:
A lot.
The long answer is: ‘merica! For a little bit. Then a bunch of places in Europe. And around Europe.
The even longer answer is: Arizona, and Alaska, and California, and Iceland. Then London. Then many other places.
We leave the DR in late May. Why late May? Well, it has to do with the length of the tourist visa in the DR, when school gets out in Arizona and when there is good weather in Europe. There’s never a simple answer for “why” with us!
We decided it’s time again for a quick visit to see my mom in Anchorage, and since Zoe recently visited her Nanna before we went to Colombia, this time I’ll take Haley. Dan is doing the samesame and going to visit his dad in California with Zoe.
But California is right next to Arizona, so we decided to have Dan take Zoe to Arizona so she can log some time with her friends. School in Arizona gets out in late May, so that seemed like a great time for optimum Zoe Hang Out With Friends time. When we left for our Worldschooling trip, Zoe was in 3rd grade. We never thought she would still be in touch with her core friendship group. But she is and we try to get her back to see them every year to 18 months. Give or take.
Did you get all that? Haley and I head to Alaska, Dan and Zoe head to Arizona and California.
Haley heard we were going to Alaska and started getting excited about being up north. We said we were headed to Europe after that, and she asked if we could go to Iceland. Dan managed to book Haley and I on a 5-day layover in Iceland on the way to Europe. Dan and Zoe have their own plans to hang out in London and wait for us. There may or may not be a birthday surprise waiting for Zoe in London. Spoiler alert: there will be. #hamilton #shedoesnotreadthisblog #donttellher
After 5 days in Iceland, Haley and I will show up in London and meet up with Dan and Zoe. Sometimes the fam enjoys travelling separately from each other, like we did in our transition from Chiang Mai to Medellin. This time we are swapping the parental/kid configuration. Won’t it be cool when the configuration is parents vs kids? #goalz
And after London? Well, we don’t know it all yet, but we are working on it. It’s pretty much a laundry list of potential European countries: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Poland and Greece. Where and when exactly, we don’t know. We do know we’ll end up somewhere hot and water-y for a month or so at the end, to hunker down in the sunshine, rest up from all that summer travel and for Haley and I to dive again.
How will we be getting to all of these places? Driving! So in other words… ROAD TRIP THROUGH EUROPE!
We want to take advantage of the time we have in Schengen (the zone of European countries that Americans can stay in for no more than 90 days in a 180 day period). We also want to be there during the nice weather. Unfortunately, that’s when EVERYONE does it. But whatever. We know several other families planning to be in Europe this summer and we hope to meet up with them. And we want to check out a few more countries we haven’t seen before.
So all of that means the blog posts will be coming at a much faster pace, and they’ll probably be a lower quality because I’ll have less time to edit them! I’ll be sure to include a lot of pictures and hopefully you’ll forgive me.
If any of our lovely readers have suggestions for things to see along that route, we are all ears. We love hearing from others on what they enjoyed doing and seeing. Likewise if any of you will be anywhere near any of us, you better let us know! Meeting up with people we know will make this epic road trip even epic-er.
