After Four Months, Home

Once we got back in the U.S., Lisa spent two days in Boston, doing a whirlwind visit with friends, family, and old co-workers before heading to Tucson to prepare for a new job. I spent a few more days in the area, to spend more one-on-one time with my father, my sisters, and a few friends before making the move to Arizona.

Now we’re in Tucson, moving into a new home and beginning a new phase of our lives. The memories we’ve collected will be with us for a lifetime. The things we’ve learned, I’m sure, will unfold more gradually, as travel experiences always do, popping up in months and years to come to remind us of the remarkably diverse world we live in and the extraordinary opportunity that we’ve had to experience some of it.

Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to follow our journey through this blog. We wish you all happy, safe, and interesting travels in the future!

Relaxing in Paris

The final stop on our trip was Paris, France. Paris and Singapore were the only two places we visited that we had been to before. Singapore was a break in the middle of our trip and a chance to spend time with an old friend. We chose Paris as the city in which to end our oddyssey because we wanted to finish someplace fun, someplace romantic, and because Lisa and I both have great memories of the city from a previous visit.

We based ourselves in a hotel near Rue Cler and the Eiffel Tower. Since we had previously seen many of the city’s tourist attractions, we didn’t stress over experiencing them all over again. We did make it for the first time to the Rodin sculpture museum (which was very worthwhile) and to Montmarte (which was more touristy and less interesting), but otherwise we simply spent time enjoying the city. We walked the streets, went to cafes, ate crepes and chocolate, relaxed among the flowers and sculptures of the Luxembourg Gardens, drank wine while sitting in the grass near the Eiffel Tower, and tried to contemplate the amazing journey we’d been on for the past four months.

Then we boarded a plane for Boston.


Here is Lisa enjoying the Luxembourg Gardens...














and Bob blogging from a cafe...

Moods of the Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower has many different looks, depending on your vantage point or the time of day. Here are some of the moods of the Eiffel Tower that we experienced while in Paris...

Germany - Munich to Heidelberg

Vienna was a place where all the stars seemed to line up for us. We had good weather most of the time, we found a number of culturally interesting activities to experience, and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay. Munich, on the other hand, was our karmic payment for Vienna. For two days, it rained almost nonstop and the August temperatures actually dipped into the 50’s. We’d been hoping for a break from the 100 degree days of the Middle East, but this was ridiculous ;-) Not only that, but we arrived in Munich on a Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, nearly every shop in this Catholic city was closed. On Monday, nearly every museum was shuttered.

Oh, well. We’d had such an interesting trip to this point that we really couldn’t be upset. We cheered ourselves with a typically Munich cultural activity – a night in a beer garden, eating monstrous pretzels and heaping potato dishes, and drinking one-liter beers. It wasn’t Oktoberfest, but Bavarians don’t need an excuse to drink at their beloved beer gardens, so we joined right in...















After seeing a weather report that promised continued rain for several more days, we decided to leave Munich early and head to sunnier Heidelberg. A beautiful, charming city, Heidelberg was a nice place to wander and to see a different part of Germany as our tour wound down.

Here is a riverfront view of Heidelberg...

Cafes, Wine Taverns and Thermal Baths in Austria

The next stop on our European journey was Vienna, Austria. This was our third country in central Europe, and yet as we moved from one of these places to the next, the connections between them were readily apparent. Sure, the languages were different and the cultures varied, but the train rides were relatively short, the architecture was similar, and the food was comparable. Prague, Krakow and Vienna, in fact, were all a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When you experience this up close, it makes sense why the Czechs and the Poles, in particular, chafed at their half-century of domination by the Soviet Union in the 20th century. This is truly the heart of Central Europe, rather than the Eastern Europe that many of grew up hearing about during the Cold War.

Lisa and I had an especially good time in Vienna. As in the rest of Europe, we didn’t have the unusual and distinctive encounters that we had in the non-Western world, but we still did our best to collect cultural experiences. We made some of the usual stops (the Hofburg Palace, the Cathedral, the Old Town), but we also tried to go beyond the typical tourist sites. Since Vienna is one of the birthplaces of the European café, we spent an afternoon in a Viennese coffeehouse. We also spent an evening in a wine tavern, drinking locally produced wine in a house that Beethoven once lived in. Another day, we spent several hours at a thermal bath, an experience that is particularly popular in central Europe.

Entering a local wine tavern in the Beethovenhaus...



















On the way from Vienna to Munich, we spent a day in Salzburg, Austria. Nestled in the foothills of the Alps, the charmingly quaint home of Mozart and the Sound of Music is an interesting place to visit. The downside, though, is that it’s been discovered. And discovered and discovered. If you want to experience the Disney version of Austria, this is the place to go. I think it was more over-run by tourists than any other European city I’ve ever been to. Worthwhile to see, but we were glad that most of our time had been spent in Vienna.

Do, re, mi... one of Salzburg's Sound of Music sights...