Tonight I booked travel for our European vacation - 13 days at the end of July, 7 in Paris and 5 in Amsterdam, with a train ride in between.  How cool is that?  Cannot wait. 

Now that we're actually going there are a kazillion details to nail down, like ... where are we staying :) and what are we going to do?  But that's the fun part.  The only fixed point is the Champs de Elysee on Sunday 7/24 (the finish of the Tour de France!)

We are planning to stay in the "center" of both cities; they both have lots to see just walking around, and great public transportation for going a bit further.

I must tell you this is so much easier now than it used to be, with all the great online travel websites.  Hipmunk is especially excellent, as is Kayak, and they link to a bunch of travel review sites.  No one site has all the information, but by clicking around a little the picture emerges.  And you come out of the process feeling like you got a good deal, and you [somewhat] know what you're getting into.  (You can remind me I said that, stay tuned :)

The key underlying technology is Google Maps.  How excellent that anyone can just link in and use them.

The bummer in all this is the exchange rate with the Euro; just when you think you have a deal, you realize yikes! it's not such a deal in Dollars :(