Then in November I spent a week in South Africa. Well, actually, only 4 days - the other 3 days were all travel - UGH! We did break up the trip by stopping overnight in London and seeing Hairspray in the West End. Now that's the way to travel!
In December my husband and I spent a week near Branson, Missouri at a condo on a lake. That was more of a culture shock than either Europe or South Africa! No further comments, except that we met some wonderful friends there and shared some very quality time.
This past spring I got to spend a whole month in Europe! I stayed in Oxford/London for two weeks visiting my daughter, and when she was finished with her studies another friend met us there. We then flew to Rome and spent two nights there before taking the train to Florence. From there we went to Venice. When our flight to Paris was cancelled due to the volcanic ash problem, we had to be creative in order to make our Eurostar connection from Paris to London and get back in time for our flight home. We ended up taking an express train from Venice to Milan, a regional train from Milan to Ventimiglia (on the border of Italy and France), a local train from Ventimiglia to Nice (yes, we went through the French Riviera), and another regional train up to Paris. This took us 14 hours and put us in Paris at midnight, where we promptly took a cab to the Eiffel Tower! The next day at noon we were at the train station and on our way back to London for a couple of days of shopping before heading home.
But that's not all, folks! I just returned from a tour of Central Europe in which we visited Munich, Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Salzburg, and Oberammergau. Details and photos are up on my sister-in-law, Linda's blog, Front Row Friends.
Next up - a trip in late fall or early winter to see my granddaughter, who will be born in London in November. One of these days I'm going to calculate the mileage and see how far I really did travel the last twelve months!
