The Plan

After a couple of false starts, we finally made the leap to embark on our 3rd trip to Europe.

Where to go, where to go, where to go???

Our first trip was a lifelong dream come true: London, Paris, Brussels, Octoberfest, Neuschwanstein, Salzburg, Lipizzaner Stallions, Vienna Boys Choir, Venice, a cruise to Athens and the Greek islands, Florence, Christmas midnight Mass at the Vatican, Pisa, Genoa, Italian Rivera, French Rivera, Monaco, Lyon, Dijon - and many other surprises never ever imagined, like Willy Wetsocks, GarmischPartenkirchen, Jungfraujouch, Lucerne, Gotthard Tunnel and Aix-en-Provence .

Our second trip was a special reward for drinking Corona Beer! Dorothea entered a "Find Your Beach" contest and won a week's paid vacation, including airfare, to our favorite beach. We started out with a plan to relive our honeymoon in Montego Bay but wound up in Sitges, Spain, just outside of Barcelona. What the hey, if you're going to get a free plane ride to a beach, why take just a short hop to Jamaica? Move over Dali, here we come! 

Can't go to that part of the world without going to Valencia, Seville and Lisbon. Catholics, when in that area, are obliged to make a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Fatima and the Templar Knights. This helps shorten any potential stays in purgatory. 

Bordeaux, Geneva, Luxembourg, Christmas in Amsterdam and New Year's under the Eiffel Tower filled in the "ho hum" time. But again, surprises were the unimaginable:  Arcachon, CERN, Montblanc, Chamonix, Gruyere fondue, Bruges, and Calais.

Some will say, our travels are too rushed, and we don’t get a chance to appreciate what an area has to offer. Au contraire mon ami! We do not just scratch the surface. Everything is quality time and truly a life-altering experience. There is no way to go into the details of each and every event and convey the essence of the experience. Suffice it to say, those experiences are why we are going back. America is great and the best place in the world, but the diversity and lure of European culture and its unique soul keeps tugging at us to experience everything it has to offer. Life is short and there is sooooo much to see and experience.

For our third adventure we start at the Fountainebleu outside of Paris, then on to Roger Federer's  Swiss home town for a month with side trips to Christmas Markets, Christmas Markets and more Christmas Markets! Then on to Prague, Vienna for Christmas, and Budapest for New Year's. Being of Polish decent, guess where to next; Krakow, Auschwitz and Warsaw. Then on to Berlin and then south to the trail of the Brothers Grimm to Frankfurt, Bonn, Dusseldorf, Antwerp and back again to Calais.

A ferry takes us across the channel to the world of wrong-way drivers. After a stopover in Canterbury, it will be three weeks along the southern coast of England to Fishguard for anther ferry ride to Ireland. It's already March and almost St. Patrick's day. I wonder what St. Pat's day is like in Dublin. I’m counting on Dorothea to remember how to get back to our hotel. Without her, I would still be wandering around Munich.

 After a few other high points in Ireland like St. Andrews, it's another ferry ride back to England and the Scottish Highlands and Edinburgh. On the road back to London; Nottingham, Cambridge, Stratford, and Oxford are all places that were here-to-fore only words on pages.

By now we're down to our last few silver dollars and we need to make our way back to Paris. So, after a final week in London, we head to Dover, catch our last ferry ride back to Calais and do the laundry that has been piling up since we left. Then, on to the City of Lights. 

Once in Paris, we have 10 days to live like Parisians. Wine, cheese, wine, bread, wine, wine, wine, and more wine. Sorry, drinking a lot of French wine costing only 2.5 Euros isn't considered gluttony, it's considered opportunistic. Then, it's back home for 3 months to a de-tox center.

Hope you'll follow us. We plan to have an immensely good time and if you can't join us in person, at least join us in spirit.

Ed and Dorothea