Marc Madness

Today Amanda and I are celebrating Marc Madness (not to be confused with March Madness, of course).

What exactly is Marc Madness?

“Today, eight years ago -we took our first trip ‘across the pond’ -our first stop on the journey was at the boarder where we met a man named Marc who told us we would not be entering his country since our stories were not adding up and our itinerary was simply ‘bizarre’ -he held us for over six hours, questioning us and everyone on our contact list about our plans. When he finally did let us go (on his terms) we asked what we had done and he yanked our papers back yelling “Have you no remorse?!” Today we celebrate the fact that we did, in fact, get to enter the country…have an amazing trip and return many more times. Thank you Marc!”

…and thus began the love of travel.

So how did we celebrate? With cupcakes (and muffins) of course!

Amanda’s:

Mine:

The day itself is definitely one that will always be remembered. When we returned, Marc made his way into just about every Friday night dinner conversation. At one point or another the story would always shift to Marc.

We wrote the whole story up back in 2010, and originally I planned to edit it up and get it posted in time for today…but since that didn’t happen the short and sweet version above will have to do.

2010:

Look how young and green we looked! So innocent and … well … untraveled!

I feel this picture pretty much sums up how we felt about the trip. Some reason I spent 99% of my time royally unimpressed (I honestly don’t know why -I was in EUROPE for goodness sake!):

It was a wonderful trip -one that has so many, many memories -and one that will always be special to me. You can never retake that first trip. Nothing will ever prepare you for that FIRST journey into a foreign land. Now? It just feels like home.