Back in the US of A

Europe was grand, the US is great, and I am jetlagged. Yesterday, and sort of the day before, was almost 27 hours of travelling. We were up at 4:45 AM Vienna time on the 8th, which would have been 8:45 PM Denver time on the 7th. After passing through Heathrow and Calgary, we made it home around 11:30 PM Denver time on the 8th, thus the nearly 27 hours. Suprisingly (or not, depending on your experience) we couldn't really sleep in today, so we were getting groceries before 8 AM.

All that said, we had a great time in Europe and we have more than 3,600 pictures to show it (3,000 from me, 600 from Jen). I'll spare you the whole story and give you the brief run down. We started out in Basel, Switzerland visiting my friends Angie and Mathias and their new baby Olivia. They were terrific hosts, especially considering their new parents status, and we saw some excellent sites in Switzerland and extreme southwestern Germany including a vista from the top of the Rigi near Lucerne and a visit to the Vitra Design Campus in Weil am Main.

We braved EasyJet and made it to Berlin where we met up with Jen's sister and parents and the rest of the Rick Steves tour group. We spent a couple days mainly in East Berlin before departing for a day in Dresden. After that we crossed over into the Czech Republic stopping at the Terezin concentration camp before ending up in Prague. We spent a couple of days in that gorgeous city before heading to the village of Cesky Krumlov. It is a picture perfect village with an impressive castle towering over it, and a great place for us to celebrate our anniversary. The next day we stopped briefly in Melk, Austria to check out the monastery there before ending up in beautiful Vienna, where we spent two and a half days gawking at buildings, eating great food, checking out the art and culture, and gorging ourselves on insanely good gelato.

By the time our trip was over, I think we were ready to be back home. I was sad to leave the splendor of Europe, but I was very happy to make it back safe and sound to the States, where the coffees are large, the beds have sheets, and drinking fountains are taken for granted.

Naturally, I will be putting up pictures here in the relatively close future. I'll probably do a condensed gallery for the ADD set and also put up a more detailed version for those who want the whole story. Of course, first I have to sort through 3,000 pictures...