Introduction

I was encouraged by a friend today to start documenting our adventures of planning our big "once in a lifetime" family trip to Europe. Rather than blasting Facebook all the time I thought I'd keep the detailed notes here and just tell people where to find them. That way only people who are actually interested will read, and other Facebook friends won't have to endure all the details.
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Today we are camped out all day at our "usual" spot -- Caribou Coffee in Burnsville on Co Rd 11 & Co Rd 42.

Laura just finished booking a hotel for our one night in Florence (June 23).

I spent at least four hours yesterday researching hotels in central Rome. They all started to look the same to me after awhile. Very expensive, all look fairly dated. It seems like most of the sites we want to see are close together, so I'm focused on staying close the the Colosseum and train station, so that we're able to easily walk to the major site. Today I found a good recommendation on a hotel that seems like a winner -- just waiting to get an email back from them confirming availability.