Just as there are many different "good day" greetings in Europe, visitors to Europe enjoy different things. Following are some of our special experiences as we ventured off to Europe to celebrate our 50th.
The evening sun was still high in the sky as we departed Minneapolis, Minnesota airport on Icelandair. We headed north over Lake Superior and east towards Quebec, Canada and out over the Labrador Sea. Greenland appeared on the left side of the plane and shortly after we landed in Iceland, changed planes and on to London having traveled across six time zones.
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| Buckingham Place |
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| Thistle Arch |
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| Parliament and Big Ben |
Our London hotel was right near the Thistle Arch which at one time was the entrance to Buckingham Place. While London was not our "cup of tea" it was interesting to see the various sites and then we looked forward to heading to Dover for our English Channel crossing into France.
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| Cliffs of Dover |
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| English Channel Ferry |
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| Amsterdam Canal |
We traveled through the Belgium farm country on to the Netherlands (Holland) and into Amsterdam. Amsterdam with its unique architecture, canals, bridges and more bikes than one can imagine was very interesting. But even more interesting was venturing into the countryside and seeing the beautiful small homes and, of course the windmills.
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| Belgium Countryside |
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| Working Holland Windmill |
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| Rhine River Cruise Boat |
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| Rhine Valley |
Next it was on to Germany and cruise on the River Rhine past some magnificent castles and equally magnificent Riesling grape vineyard. It was then on to the Heidelberg with its huge castle and rustic town square. That put us very close to the Black Forest which is the home of the Cuckoo Clock and that wonderful Black Forest cake.
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| Rhine River Castle |
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| Heidelberg Square |
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| Black Forest Chalet |
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| Han's Horses and Wagon's |
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| Mount Pilatus |
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| Mount Pilatus |
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| Lake Lucerne |
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Black Forest--Home of the Cuckoo Clock
After leaving the Black Forest the next nation was Switzerland. And if we were going to pick just one nation to visit this would have been the one. We were looking forward to this spot since we started our tour and it did not disappoint. A cruise on Lake Lucerne, taking a cable car to the top of Pilatus where we had a great view of the Swiss Alps and where para-sailors glided, and the most favorite of all was visiting the small Swiss farm of Hans and Gretchen where there horse-drawn wagons took us though the meadows to their home.
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Han and Gretchen's Home
It was not time to head to Paris and see our friend David West and visit his favorite markets and sidewalk cafes in addition to see some of the famous Paris sites. And that we did as David was a great host and tour guide!
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| Ah Paris |
It was a great trip and one of the wonderful thing about traveling is that you get to come home to familiar surroundings and at this time of the year great Fall colors.
