Travel Plans

One thing I learned when I went to China was the IIHF definitely isn't extremely proactive when it comes to informing the officials of their travel plans.  When I posted on Sunday, I still had not received any information regarding flights, hotels, etc. so I didn't even know what day I was leaving the USA!  Finally, on Tuesday, the IIHF sent us our travel information.  When I opened the attachment with my flights I was totally psyched to see that I got direct flights on US Airways (where I have preferred status) both ways!  In the words of Charlie Sheen, "WINNING!"  I leave on Saturday, April 2nd at 6:20 PM from Philadelphia and fly into Charles De Gaulle in Paris.  I still don't know how I am getting from Paris to Caen but those are only minor details.  For those that aren't familiar with French geography, Caen is not Cannes, where the film festival is.  Caen is about 2 1/2 hours west of Paris, right near Normandy.  

One of the reasons I was super excited to see that I had direct flights both ways is because I'm flying home from Amsterdam, Netherlands.  I wasn't surprised to fly direct from Philly to Paris, but I figured there was no way I was going to get to go direct home.  So why am I flying home from Amsterdam instead of Paris?  One of the really cool things about getting selected for an IIHF tournament is you can tell them when and where you want to fly, within reason.  This allows you to stay for longer and be a tourist/take vacation after your tournament.  When I found out I was selected for this tournament back in October, I knew I wanted to take advantage of that but wasn't exactly sure how.  After getting clearance from work to take two weeks of PTO, I started to work on some of my friends to see if they wanted to take a trip.  One of my best friends and roommate from college, Kristin, decided to take me up on the offer.  After she got the green light from work we had decide where we wanted to go.  The nice thing about Paris is it is pretty centrally located within Europe and you can go a lot of different places all within a relatively short train ride.  After studying google maps and looking at Eurorail schedules we decided to do a 3 city loop and visit Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam.  We are both really excited because we have talked about taking a trip together forever and are finally able to do it, and to Europe no less!  I'll post later about our specific plans but at least now I know I leave the USA on April 2nd and return on Sunday, April 17th. 15 days and counting until I leave! 17 days until the start of the tournament!