Euro Trip 2017 | TBT Edition

simplyjordon
Oct 20, 2017
8 min read

Hey, babes! I hope you had an amazing week and are ready for the weekend. Somehow I just feel like the weeks are FLYING by...maybe it has been because I have been soooo busy... But, I kind of want it to all slow down a bit. Well, I want to get in my new house and have Christmas here asap, but then slow down! Haha

Well, this is a long overdue post because I have always wanted to share my Europe trip with everyone. I was thinking about sharing via Facebook photo album, but it just didn't do it justice...or maybe I never got around to it! So, I thought this would be the absolute favorite place to put together my favorite moments in Europe!

Just to give you an idea of HOW OVERDUE this post really is....I went to Europe in January of 2017. (Where is the face palm emjoi when you need it?!) I can't wait to share with you guys!

So, to start off - my friend, Emma, is the ultimate travel buddy. She finds the best deals, sets up the best hotels....I mean she pretty much was the travel guide of our trip. WHICH I LOVED. I'm usually the one that has to do all the planning, know all the details, etc....but, luckily Emma girl took care of it all for us. It was like a breath of fresh air for me...I could just relax this trip and just have someone tell me where to go and when to go. It was soooo easy. So, THANK YOU EMMA for EVERYTHING - You made our trip perfect.

During our time in Europe we got the opportunity to travel to several different places....I am going to share as we traveled through Europe.

1st stop - AMSTERDAM

Chad and I flew from Jax to Chicago to catch a flight to Amsterdam. The flight for both of us was under $1,000.00 total round trip. Soo freaking cheap. I believe Emma and her love, Danny, got theirs for under $800.00! If you know me at all, I am indecisive when making purchases. I like internally freak out about it...so silly...so it costs a few hundred more because we wanted. When you see deals like this, just do it...don't wait around. We flew through the night and arrived to Amsterdam early in the morning...so we had the entire day to explore. We tried to sleep as much as possible on the plane so we could power through.

First thing we headed to see was the famous I AMSTERDAM sign! It was literally right down the street from our hotel which was perfect. Emma was soooo good about asking Chad and I what was on our buckle list for each city we visited and this was my only bucket item for the Amsterdam list....so to get to see in the 1st hour of being there...I was pumped!

This was our hotel in Amsterdam, which actually was the BEST hotel we stayed at for the entire trip. We had the cutest little balcony and a fantastic breakfast every morning. I totally recommend this hotel for Amsterdam!

We next headed to a really cute market and grabbed some goodies! Yum!

The amount of bikes there was INSANE ....also if you are going to visit and you think you want to rent a bike...just don't - these locals are craaazzzzy fast on these bikes. I almost got taken out about 3 different times. Its a serious thing over there! At the train station you would see rows and rows of bikes and no cars. So cool though! We joked the entire trip about buying a bike and locking it up to leave it there and come visit again later in life to see if it was still there!

Here are a few more pictures from the 2 days we spent in Amsterdam.....

Another fun thing we did in Amsterdam was we went to the Amsterdam ICE BAR! It was freezing, but such a cool experience! It is a great tourist spot to hit while you are there.

And finally, 2 other highlights of Amsterdam...I don't really have photos of. I wanted to enjoy the moment on one of them and the other we were not allowed to take photos.

1. We had brunch on a boat in the canal. It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Chad has a gopro video he has in the works that will highlight all the fun we had on that boat..hopefully I can share that soon.

2. We visited Anne Frank's house....it was one of the most meaningful and touching experiences....if you go to Amsterdam, WAIT IN THE LINE & GO! It is completely worth it.

2nd stop - BRUSSELS

So, I think the coolest thing about visiting Europe is how easy it is to go from place to place by train. I lovvvveeed the train, but boy did we have a horrific experience on our first train! HAHA - I am laughing out loud typing this. Soooo, we knew we had tickets for the train, but we didn't think the seats were assigned. We just hopped on a car on the train and sat down....well, of course some how we ended up sitting in first class on the train by accident. We were making ourselves all comfy and then we weren't sure if they were our assigned seats or not....We asked a very nice gentleman that worked on the train and he said, continue to sit here and at the next stop in about 10 minutes, go out on the landing and switch cars and go to your assigned seats. So, we were waiting and then the dreadful "Train Manager" showed up....goodness, I WISH we had photos or videos of this...he pretty much chewed us out and told us to walk through the entire train, WHICH LET ME TELL YOU - IT IS NOT EASY with luggage and a small walk way. Think of a walk way as small as walking on a plane....that was the 4 of us pushing all of our luggage all the way down about 15 cars....I have NEVER laughed sooo hard in my entire life. It may not sound very funny, but we were so tickled and embarrassed walking down those 15 cars ..I will never forget it.

We stayed in a hostel in Brussels, but luckily we got our own room with a bathroom with 4 beds. It wasn't really a hostel for us, but if you are traveling alone - it would be a super trendy place to day. They have an awesome social area with pool tables, games, bar, etc. It was an awesome set up. We only stayed in Brussels for one night and boy that was probably enough. We went sight seeing, which they had the most FABULOUS buildings out of any city that we visited, but they had a bar called Delirium and boy we had a GOOD time!

Oh & the best thing they had in Brussels were these waffles! I guess they are known for their waffles with chocolate on them..ohhhhh myyyy gooodness - sooo yummy!!

3rd stop - PARIS

We spent 2 beautiful & FREEZING days in Paris. It was nice going in January because there were not a lot of tourist around, things were cheaper and not so busy. Obviously - my top thing in Paris was the Eiffel Tower. We decided to take the stairs up the tower instead of the elevator. Which was exhausting, but super rewarding. Once we got to the mid part of the tower, there was an ICE SKATING rink up there! It was so neat. I figure skated competitively for many years...this was so special to me.

Funny story about the locks - so we all know the famous bridge with all the love locks in Paris, right? The bridge is the Pont des Arts bridge Well, Emma and I bought locks so we could lock them up to that bridge while we were in Paris. For YEARS, people have been attaching their locks with love messages to the bridge in a symbolic way. Then, usually once you lock your lock to the bridge ...you then throw your key to seal the deal into the Seine River below the bridge.

Well, just our luck.....we walked all the way to the Pont des Arts bridge and we see NO locks... only a few were left on some of the light posts on the bridge...we were so confused. I immediately started to google to make sure this was the right bridge. To my surprise ...apparently over 700,000 locks were locked to that bridge and to give you an idea of weight, that is about 20 elephants tied to this bridge. Sections of the bridge were crumbling due to the weight. The city decided to remove all the chain railings with the locks to discontinue the tradition. We were so sad, but we just locked our locks to the light posts left & threw one of our keys into the river.

When you buy a lock, it comes with 2 keys. I told Emma, lets only throw one in and keep the other. I don't know why I said this, but I did...and thankfully.......We started walking about a quarter mile down the road just kind of bummed about the love lock bridge and we came across an area of ALL THE RAILING with the ORIGINAL love locks....we felt like we COULDN'T leave our lock on the light post and that we needed to join our locks with all these other locks......We RAN down BACK to our locks and luckily we had an extra key...we unlocked the locks and ran back down to the original railing and relocked our locks....See our pics below where we have our locks locked in two different areas!

More pictures of PARIS ....

4th stop - AMSTERDAM

After Paris, we came back to Amsterdam for one last night before we flew to Iceland the next morning.

5th stop - ICELAND

Well, the coolest thing about our set up is we flew ICELAND AIR - with Iceland Air, you have the option when you are flying to Europe to stop in Iceland for so many nights for no change fees. We took full advantage of this and spent 2 awesome nights in Iceland. Unfortunately, I don't have a ton of amazing pictures because while we were there it was very rainy....We will have to go back to FOR sure to see all the beautiful scenery! But, GOOD NEWS ....we DID get to enjoy the Blue Lagoon! Knock that one off my bucket list. Emma said it up perfectly because you have limited day light in Iceland...we got to spend the beginning of the Blue Lagoon in the dark and then watch the sunrise in the Blue Lagoon as well...it was soooo darn cool! I highly recommend doing it where you get to see it at night and day.

Also, the drinks are SUPER expensive there. If you plan on staying for a long period of time...stop at Duty Free at the airport when you arrive to get everything you need. If you decide you want to go out for drinks, no worries...just search for happy hours and a lot of the happy hours are drinks for half off! You just have to search for them. I'm talking about drinks for $25 a piece, so the happy hours are key!

Finally, if you go to Iceland you have to try the famous Hot Dog - I don't care if you don't like hot dogs, you HAVE to try one of these.