One more month...

Just one month from today I will be embarking on a journey like nothing I have experienced before. I will be on a plane destined for Lisbon Portugal with 6 of the best friends a person could ever dream of having. This will be the first stop in a trip around Europe that will cover 9 countries, 42 days, countless miles and endless adventures! (Click the pic for our scheduled stops!)

I had never felt the need to travel and see the world but after spending 2+ weeks in Japan with my family I was hooked. I was ignorant to the fact that there were so many things to learn just from being in a foreign country and immersing yourself in the culture. I thought that anything I would need from a different country could be shipped via FedEx and anything I would want to see I could do so on the Discovery Channel. But after seeing the sunrise from the top of Mt. Fuji with my dad after a 2 day climb to the summit, I quickly realized there are things you must live to truly understand.

You learn more spending a day jumping from train to train with nothing but  hope you will end up in the right place then you ever could in a classroom or from any television program. This trip is bound to be an adventure, not everything will go as planned, the weather may not always cooperate, our feet will definitely hurt and i'm sure we will lose our way a time or two..but those will surely be the best moments!

My mom said it best when she told me that "there are few times in your life when you will be able to travel with people you enjoy traveling with". She has my dad and I have a group of friends that cant be beat. I can't wait to dip my feet into the pristine waters of the Mediterranean in Barcelona, feel the romance of Paris under the Eiffel Tower, enter Berlin through the symbol of the 3rd Reich at the Brandenburg Gate and simply lay my eyes on, in my opinion, the single most astonishing sporting structure ever built, the mighty Colosseum in Rome!