On even years our summers were dominated by home leave back in the States. Odd years we spent our summers exploring Europe. Two years earlier, from 10 -25 August 1991, we had visited Berlin and Dresden in former East Germany; Prague, Czech Republic; Bratislava, Slovakia; and Budapest, Hungary just before the end of the Soviet Union. The last time we had been south to Switzerland and Italy was the Spring of 1989, before Will was born and the girls were too young to remember the vacation. Now that he was almost four, the kids were now old enough to understand and enjoy their travels. My Canadian colleague at NATO recommended a villa in Tuscany that he and his wife and many from his delegation had stayed at on previous vacations. So we booked an apartment in
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