Let me first preface this and the following travel posts by warning everyone that I am not in the right “after-vacation mindset” that I should be in. You recognize the kind—the overly happy, satisfied, ‘I’ve-just-been-doing-nothing-but-having-fun’ types that literally have just been back from doing nothing but having fun. Blah, I wish that was me.

Our trip to Europe lasted about 10 days. During these 10 days, I’ve played “tour guide” with my family in tow. I use the term lightly because although I planned practically the entire trip, my dear sister deems she “didn’t get the full experience” as she would have if she were on an actual tour. Well, no one else seemed remotely interested in actually doing anything in regards to this trip so instead of being relaxed and content, I feel like I’m coming out of it more tired and more unappreciated than I feel at work—which is the entire reason for this so-called vacation! What a jip! Thank God for Hawaii in less than a month.

5 countries stepped foot on + 8 plane rides + 4 grumpy ass family members that spent the past 12 days together 24/7 = not what I’d call a vacation.

Ok, enough of that. Overall the trip was a pretty good one in terms of things we saw with the short amount of time that we had in each city. It was crazy tiring and my feet got all torn up from all the walking we did, but I DID lose 7 pounds so I’d chalk that up as a win. Plus, I’ve been back for..oh, about 2 weeks now and as insane as my family made me, I’d take that over the dull monotony of work any day.

First stop, Taiwan! I’ll explain in the next post why we essentially went backwards.