We are underway on our adventures!! Our package never arrived with our tickets, but we did happen to find passes at a good price in Budapest at the Eurail office. We missed out on most of Croatia, which is quite sad, so we will have to come back someday. We had a great time in Split, then took a ferry over to Ancona, Italy. Split was a great city to do in a day, and beautiful at that. There is this great bell tower that overlooks the whole city, and the view is beautiful!                                         Of course, Rome was amazing. You could be there for a week and not see everything. For sake of time, we went to the most important things. The Colosseum, of course. Then the Vatican city and Sistine chapel was awesome, we had a great time going up to the Capella of St. Peters Basilica. You actually walk up about 50 flights of extremely narrow stairs, and walk in a curved dome shape staircase around the actual dome, and then come out for a breathtaking panoramic view of the entire city. Its hard to explain, but lets just say, if you get claustrophobic at all, don't think about it!
   After Rome was Florence, and we stayed in a small town in the countryside of Tuscany. I think I enjoyed the small Town more than the crowded touristy city of Florence. I had the best pizza of my life there. The difference, garden ripened tasting vegetables and fresh flavorful ingredients. Basil of course helps anything. Who would have thought that freshness could affect quality so much? So much better than the methylene gas ripened vegetables we consume in the States.
  We took a side trip to Pisa, and saw the leaning tower. Pretty cool sight. It was 15 Euro to walk up it, so we decided not to. The next day was Venice. Super cool city just to get lost in. For all the winding streets and beautiful architecture and bridges, its hard to take a bad picture. I loved the masquerade masks, and I wish so badly I could take one home for my artistic actor in training sister! She would have loved to have one!
    Finally, we spent our last days in Italy in the Cinque Terre. Highly recommend by my friend Emmi Genovese and Rick Steve's (Author of Europe through the Back Door), we were not disappointed. If you have not had the opportunity to travel here, put it on your bucket list. It is a set of 5 small villages on the Italian river set right up into the mountains. We stayed in Vernazza, the 4th village, and it was the best by far. The smallest and the least touristy by night. In the evening the locals come down and join the few tourists smart enough to stay there. they have had some bad flooding, and the city has had to be remodeled. Despite this, it is still beautiful.
      Italy was overall amazing. The Italians are crazy, passionate, aggressive and amazing. Its been a great trip so far, and we are looking forward to many more countries.. That's three down, about 13 more to go! Pray for us! Miss you and love you all!

Hey Friends and Family!

        Here we are making our final preparations for backpacking! If any of you have been on facebook recently you might have heard of our adversity's regarding our train passes. We had to have our train passes sent to my mom, because they only ship to America. She sent them in a box about 4 weeks ago, and they have not arrived. They told us they would arrive in 6-10 business days, which usually doesn't happen, but they never take 4 weeks. They have not arrived yet, and we were set to leave yesterday. We are a day or two behind schedule as is, and so now we are trying to figure out what we want to do. If the passes arrive while we are gone, we can return them, but it will take takes four weeks to process. We will also loose 85% of the money we spent. We can them buy them here, but it will cost us 20% more. So we will end up spending a lot more than planned! So please pray for us that we will have wisdom in deciding what to do. Also pray our passes come on Monday as they could still possibly come!
       If all goes well, we will hit up 15 European countries! Starting from Hungary we will travel to Croatia, Italy, Switzerland, France, Monaco, Spain, England, Dublin, Brussels, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany, Chech Republic, Austria again, Poland and back to Hungary. If anyone has any cities or places in mind that they would recommend, please post a comment!
      Chaney arrived on Saturday, and with the delay we have been packing and repacking, washing clothes and relaxing, So it has not been a huge loss of time in our vacation, just a loss of time in traveling all the places we wanted to see.  We will try to post often on our trip, and post pictures too! Stay tuned! And please pray that our tickets come, and that we are wise with how we travel. Also we need prayer for protection in our journey! Thank you so much for your prayers and support! We will keep you posted on all happenings!

Love, Jono and Sarah