Planning a France/Spain Escape

Its been over a year and a half since our backpacks were strapped on our backs and we were shuffling from guesthouse to guesthouse. It has been very quiet lately on aroundtheworldonatoilet.com, but it hasn’t been so with our lives.  Since being home Lianna had been working for an airline quite unhappily, until she went and landed a job with the biggest adventure travel company in Canada, G Adventures, formally known as GAP.

Because of this, anymore long term traveling ideas were to be placed on hold while she settled in to her new career. This made it an easy decision to stay and to move into a 1 bedroom apartment in the West end of Toronto, halfway between my work and her’s.

But of course a passion for something like travel never fully goes away and  after I experienced a few frustrating days at work, I figured it was time to leave behind our day to day routine and plan an escape.

Canada is a great to place to live and we are very proud of the country we’re from, but what I can’t seem to understand is how little we value our vacation time. Canadians receive an annual vacation minimum of 10 working days! Compare that with countries like Denmark, Sweden and Germany which are closer to a minimum of 5 weeks a year, and Canada looks pathetic.

We started with many ideas and when I started searching for cheap international flights I was able to find a few options which would meet our budget and timeframe. With a few exciting choices, we were contemplating between attractive options like Costa Rica and a few US states, but with spring in the air and food being paramount in importance on this trip, we knew we would be Europebound.

Lonely Planets were bought, backpacks dusted off, and passports renewed. Its now time  to search out a route from Toulouse, France to Barcelona, Spain.