Final Countdown

With but a week left before our departure, Nicole is spending time with her family in Monterey while Katie takes time to relax at the beach, hang out with friends, and spend numerous hours in the “travel” section of Barnes & Noble, gathering as much information as possible on her pad of Herman Miller paper.
We’ve been avidly surfing for couches, and have been relatively successful. Thus far, we have found a very comfortable couch with a guy named Robbin, who in return for shelter requested that we bring him a few boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. He lives right near central station in Amsterdam and sounds very excited about being our “tour guide” while we are there.
Stop number two is in Rotterdam, where we will stay in a hostel for one night. Katie isn’t too sure what the status of that is, or the name and location of the place, but Nicole has it all figured out…
Stop number three was originally supposed to be in Brussels, but after talking with some locals, they convinced us that Brussels should be a day trip, not a home base. This actually worked out because we couldn’t find anyone to host us in Brussels, but we found a very nice group of people willing to host us in Ghent. We have gathered that this is somewhat of a college town and we will be arriving during the first week of school. Our hosts have assured us that there will be plenty of “back to school activities” taking place.
We are still working on a place to stay in France…Katie has a couple of friends living there right now, but isn’t sure if staying with them is in the cards. We’ll see…