And it’s over….well in another ten hours or so.  My wife and I are sitting in the Zurich Airport awaiting our flight into Atlanta.  From there a short hop back across the states will bring us home once more.  The two weeks have flown by and I am not sure I am ready to go home yet.  Europe is a small area relative to the United States.  There are just so many places for the traveler to visit and many of them seem so easily reachable, that I must resist the urge to continue on.

Canal Boat in Amsterdam

Cathedral in Lucerne, Switzerland

I have seen rivers and dikes, windmills and mountains, old cities and new.  If I am asked my favorite, I will shrug and tell you that each one had a favorite aspect.  I will remember the people who helped us along the way and the people who became our friends.  Some we may see again and others will remain a memory of a time or an event or a place.  I have taken fifteen hundred pictures and will struggle deleting any of them.  But that is the way of travel.  Unlike home, where we collect stuff, on trips you collect people and memories.

Windmill in Kinderdijke, Holland

Paddle Wheeler on Lake Lucerne

As I crossed a large piece of Europe, I wrote what ended up as a cross between a travelogue and a blog.  Some of the writings were to make sense of those fifteen hundred photos, but a great deal of the writing was due to the fact that experiencing these things left me wanting to jot down my impressions.  Hopefully a few of my readers found some interest in both.

New Friends, Great Travel Partners

When you travel, you try hard to capture the beauty and depth of what your eye sees and then attempt to transfer that through the lens to the photo.  You hope that it will show the colors of the water or the steepness of the mountain or the tallness of the buildings (seems so much more descriptive than height).  Sometimes it comes close but most of the time the photo only approximates the true effect it had on your eyes.  And then you feel the need to describe it in words and the travelogue begins.

Lake Lucerne, Switzerland

I have been blessed to have the where with all to afford travel, the ever planning spouse to keep me even just a little on track and the health to walk the cobblestone streets or climb the mountain of steps.  I can only hope that the would-be traveler does not wait too long or is not too delayed by life’s busyness to take the first step on their journey.  The world is a small place, much smaller than we pretend it to be.  We all too often think it too large or too complicated or even too scary to explore.  After taking an automobile and a plane, a bus and a tram, a boat and a train and even a cable car and a paddle wheeler, I am proof that one not only survives the adventure, they return just a little more worldly and richer for the experience.

Taste of Germany Celebration