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Freshly graduated and putting off entering the workforce, five best friends take on Europe in a two-month backpacking adventure... What could be better?

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Cruising the Bosphorus... 

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Cruising along the Bosphorus... .

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Istanbul: Market goods

Thanks to the greatness that is the hop-on-hop-off tour bus, we admired the different goods that Istanbul had to offer, including those from the Spice Market, stands around the  squares and the Grand Bazaar. Everything was so colourful! 

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Istanbul at night

Our first night in Istanbul, hours after we arrived... beautiful night to explore the area.  Our hostel was right by the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofia, which was unbelievable. 

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Walking through the streets of Rome (a sneak peak of what's to come)

I cheated a little - I'm barely through my Greece pictures (and have only started posting pictures from Turkey), but I caved and looked ahead at what was to come in Italy.  Here's a sampler for what's to come waaay in the future.  Being impatient that I am, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of these "samplers"...

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The beginning: Istanbul

...all bright eyed and bushy tailed: our first morning of our backpacking adventure; our first morning in Istanbul.  

- C

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Mom and I: Our last night in Paris by the Eiffel Tower (and my last night in Europe!!).  Never stops feeling surreal. 

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Here we go

... About to tackle the 4000+ photos and video footage. Stay tuned!

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I just found your blog and its amazing that you were all brave enough to do something like this. I would love to before I graduate. How much money did you have to save/how long did it take for you to organise everything?

You're too kind! This was the trip of a lifetime... It still feels surreal that we actually went to all those places! If you have an opportunity to travel, take it! We'd been dreaming about this trip for years (since our first year of university!) and of course we started longingly googling Europe destinations since we decided that we'd go. However, we probably didn't start concrete plans until last summer, when we made decisions on where to go. Planning was slow until we bought our plane tickets to Istanbul in the winter... But we left a lot to the last minute (aka we were booking hostels days before we flew out!) There's a lot of different ways to go about planning though. Because we were a group of 5, we booked ALL our hostel stays, flights and ferries (since 5 is a lot to accommodate last minute). But when there were only 2 of us, we planned and booked as we went. I'm not sure exactly how much we spent (plus I stayed 2 weeks longer with Becky) but the whole trip cost less than 5 grand. Hope this helps! C

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The view on our last night in Paris

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Riding bikes through Versailles

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Not too shabby for a morning run.

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When in Paris...

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Paris sunsets

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One of the highlights from Paris: a concert of Vivaldi's Four Seasons in Sainte Chapelle. Absolutely beautiful.

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...and this is about how close I made it to the Mona Lisa before the crowd scared me away

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wow