Birthday weekend!!

My birthday is on Sunday, so tonight officially marks the beginning of BIRTHDAY WEEKEND. I am going to be 24. This is literally the first time in my life where I've felt like I was getting older (not a good feeling really - I just don't want to grow up). I guess growing up is optional after all though. Really, we should have planned things in December if we actually wanted to go somewhere far for my birthday, but we didn't so shame on us. Nothing we can do now.

All I really want for my birthday is to go to Starbucks and get myself a lovely beverage - I miss it so so much. I also miss Tim Horton's, but they aren't so much worldwide like the sbux is. Timmie's will have to wait until I come home. This Starbucks craving has caused me to search far and wide (via the interWEB) searching for Starbucks locations across Europe. Unfortunately here in Nice, we do NOT have one so we must travel afar to find one. So it turns out that France only has Starbucks in two cities - Paris and Lyon. Paris, being quite a distance (~900km) away from us, was not the city of choice (slash we are going there in February). Lyon (~472km away), was the obvious second option for French Starbucks.

It would be ideal for Italy to have at least one Starbucks (seeing as the border is 30 mins away), but NOOOOO, there are no Starbucks ANYWHERE in Italy. Lucky lucky lucky us. So the next closest country (eliminating the city-state of Monaco), would be Spain. Well lookee here.... Spain is absolutely covered in Starbucks, with over 40 locations in Madrid alone (hello France, did ya get the memo? Umm yea, I'm gonna have you go ahead and get some Starbucks here, k?) Unfortunately, Spain is about an 11 hour train ride (667km) or very expensive flight away.

Turns out we are choosing the shortest distance and the cheapest - to head to Lyon for the next couple of days, scoping out where their TWO locations are. Hopefully it will be a little easier than finding a needle in a haystack. It's not like they only have two locations in the second largest city in France.. psh - piece of cake!

Alright, I'm really tired - I only got 2 hours of sleep last night, so the fact that it's midnight and I haven't died yet really speaks wonders. Until next time, when I'll be 24... oh my gosh. GROSS!