Our Trip to Europe

Day 40 – Tampa, Florida

Woke up very early this morning and so did Paul which is quite unusual. I asked him why he was up so early and his response was – “It’s 12 noon in Paris!!”. I started unpacking and checked on-line and found that they had located our missing bag and it would be delivered sometime today between 8am and 10pm. We had a lot to sort through and a pile of mail to go through.

I have to say that even though it is nice to be back home, our trip just flew by. It never felt like we had been gone all that long as we were so very busy and having such a wonderful time. There were several places that we would have liked to spend more time in and some that one or two days was enough. Paul wasn’t thrilled with Venice and I wasn’t real fond of Rome. We loved Germany but I hated the food. We were both surprised at how much we enjoyed Paris as it is such a big city. London was a lot of fun; Norway was absolutely beautiful as was Germany and Switzerland. We tended to enjoy the countryside more than the city centers although it was great to see all the major sites that we had heard so much about. The ruins in Rome were amazing, the Eiffel Tower beautiful. All of the churches we visited were fantastic with the Sistine Chapel and Notre Dame being my favorites. I loved Europe and would go back in a heartbeat and hope to plan a return in the very near future. Because there is so much to see over there, I’m not sure I would repeat any of the countries I have already been to before seeing the other countries first. I would definitely recommend the Rick Steves Tours to everyone but be prepared to go full speed the entire time. We were lucky that we had a terrific tour group and several great guides. We learned a lot about traveling, such as how to wash your clothes in a sink and string them all across your hotel room to dry!! We are comfortable maneuvering through subway and metro systems. We learned a few words in German, Italian and French and a little about their customs. It is amazing the hard times that they have been through over there with wars and dictators that we have never experienced on American soil. I think everyone should go to the Anne Frank House and Dachau as it is something that we should never forget or stop being horrified at so that something like that can never happen again anywhere.

Well, it’s back to the daily grind and real life for us but we had 6 weeks of living a dream and some fantastic memories to relive in the future.