So I haven’t really been around much at all lately, but life is keeping me very busy. As are the New Zealand photos I’m still working on! But the first part of the report should finally be up some time soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to talk a bit about my plans for this year. The boyfriend and I have decided not to leave the continent this year (meh…), and since he’s working full-time this year, we can’t just leave town for five weeks in a row. But we do have some exciting things planned, both individually and together.

On the last weekend in May / first weekend in July, I’m going to Düsseldorf to meet up with a bunch of my internet friends, especially my buddy Book. I can’t wait for that to happen. I’m not sure we’ll be doing much except hang out, so don’t expect too many pictures from that weekend.

However, in September, the boyfriend and I are off to Greece for two-ish weeks. It’ll be a luxury trip for us, in so far as we won’t be staying in hostels or in tents, and we won’t even have to travel every day! We’re starting our trip in Athens, which is great because I’ve missed the city so much since the last (first) time I was there. After that, we’re being ferried over to Mykonos for sandy beaches, and then to Santorini for beautiful caldera views. To say I was excited would be understating it. This will be a real holiday of the sort I haven’t had since I was a child: relaxing, lying by the pool and/or beach, and not really doing much at all. Of course, knowing us, we’ll end up exploring the islands and taking day trips anyway, but at least there’s potential for relaxation.

And last, but not least, we’re vaguely planning a trip to my family home in Italy around my birthday. Sadly, with that being August 11th, we’d run right into the Ferragosto holiday rush, so that’s probably not an option. We can’t really do it any later than that because of our Greece trip, but maybe we can make it work a week or two earlier than that. I really want this to happen, and not only because I want to eat pizza on my birthday (but let’s be real—it’s one of the main reasons).