The Schengen Agreement

Ever heard of the Schengen Agreement? Until a couple weeks ago, we certainly had not. It turns out that a number of years ago, a bunch of European countries kinda unified and standardized their entry requirements. Two major results of this: no border controls between those countries, and common visa requirements between all of them. One more move towards the United States of Europe (a union that might be good for the rest of the world).

The bit of the agreement that's going to have the biggest impact on us, though, is that we can't spend more than 90 days of our trip in the Schengen countries (which includes pretty much all of Europe except the UK, Ireland, Andorra, and most of the Balkan states). So, we've changed our plans a bit, and we're going to be staying in Morocco for longer than we had planned. A mildly stressful adjustment, but one we're already pretty excited about. We figure a better exchange rate and lots of mint tea sounds ideal. And now we're thinking about heading to the Canary Islands as well. So many places, so little time...

Chefchaouen, Morocco