American Family Moving to Europe - accepting the challenge!: November 2012

In order to get my Visa to live in France, I had to sign a letter to the French government stating that I promise to not work while living in France. Sounds good to me! But I have found myself actually spending a lot of my time in a sort of working capacity - as a travel agent for the Way/Pitonak family.

One of the benefits we want to make the most of during our time here is the proximity of so many amazing countries and places to visit. So travel is a priority for us. But that requires lots of planning and that planning requires lots of time. I find myself spending hours and hours each day doing research on destinations, hotels, restaurants, attractions, etc. I can get lost on TripAdvisor's website for an entire day!

We bought a large laminated map of Europe at a bookstore in Paris, and whenever we travel to a new place, we put a tag on it showing where we've been. We would love to see more & more tags on the map, so we are constantly trying to look ahead and plan our next trip. Here's where we (at least some of us) have been so far during this past year:
Paris France (duh)
Brittany France (the girls)
Savoie France (the girls)
Bondol France (Debbie)
Provence France
Burgundy France (twice)
Anzere Switzerland (the girls)
London England
Brussels Belgium
Bruge Belgium
Eindhoven the Netherlands (Sean of course & Debbie)
Venice Italy
Bari Italy (cruise stop)
Corfu Greece (cruise stop)
Santorini Greece (cruise stop)
Kusadasi (Ephesus) Turkey (cruise stop)
Manhattan Beach California
Cabo San Lucas Mexico
Pasadena California
Hermosa Beach California
Healdsburg California (Deb)
Occidental California (Deb)
Santa Cruz California
Burlingame California

Not bad, for almost 1 year in Europe. Since we never know when this adventure is going to end, we really want to take advantage of the fact that we are close to many countries and don't have to deal with the time change. Traveling all the way from California to Europe is such a loooong haul, that we want to take advantage of the closeness we now enjoy. We have 2 more trips on the books (Morocco over New Year's, and Zermatt Switzerland (skiing the Matterhorn!) during ski week), and are making summer plans. We are hoping to visit home again during Spring Break, and for summer Spain & Portugal are topping our list. Luckily the kids get quite a few vacations, and Sean is lucky enough to get European vacation days in his job, so we have time for the trips. I just need more hours in every day to plan them! Safe travels everyone...and if you need any planning help, just call Travel Agent Debbie.