I’m so excited about going to Europe again!!!!! After shopping for walking shoes yesterday, I decided to sit down and try to map out the basics of my trip, so I could see what distances I can fit in and thus where I can go in the short time I have to travel on my own. It looks something like this:

• Day 1: Fly out of the US 🙂
• Day 2: Arrive in Trieste, Italy – hopefully catch a ride with friends to Lovran, Croatia
• Day 3: Wedding in Lovran
• Day 4: More wedding festivities in Lovran
• Day 5: Shake off the (most likely massive) hangover and get my butt on a bus back to Trieste. From Trieste, catch a train to ?????
• Days 6 – 9: Travel in ?????
• Day 10: Travel back to Croatia to meet up with my girlfriends, then hit the road to explore Southern Croatia & the islands
• Days 11 – 14: Exploring Croatia, and hopefully making it to Split to see Emperor Diocletian’s Palace before turning around and heading back to Trieste
• Day 15: Fly back to the US 😦

So what I’m thinking is that I’ll probably stay in Northern Italy during my trip. I’ve been to Venice before, but didn’t get to see as much as I would have liked, so I want to go there again for at least a day and a half. Plus, there’s the Tower of Pisa, and even cooler there’s Assisi, birthplace of St. Francis (my favorite saint, though I’m nowhere near Catholic). Also, I hear that nearby in Loreto there is a tiny holy house that ‘lives’ inside of a very large church, supposedly the home of Christianity’s #1 Family when they lived in Nazareth. Like the body of St. James at Santiago, the house was flown to Europe from the Holy Land by angels. Or carted over by crusaders, but who’s really interested in the details? 😉

What can I say? I’m a sucker for medieval pilgrimage sites. I’ll report back when I can pin all of these oddball ideas together.