Post Script – (June 7th, 2011)

---

Our travels are over for this vacation and we returned home about a week ago. We have generally recovered from our jet lag and the colds we caught (our doctor’s prescribed antibiotics and we are feeling considerably better now). We have also had the opportunity to go through more than 2000 photos that we took during the trip, and we have posted a few more than 100 of them as attachments to the blog entries. There were a couple of days when we did not take any pictures, but there are at least a few on most days. You should be able to use the NEXT and PREVIOUS links in the blog if you are interested in going back to view the associated pictures with our various stories.

Some additional information –

Travel by train in Europe is comfortable and comparatively convenient. We were told that the fees for advanced bookings were lower than buying the ticket on the train, but apparently “advanced” means more than a couple of days ahead. Anyone planning to make similar arrangements should try further in advance.

Something we did do well was in booking our tours for Paris and London via Grayline. There may have been other tour agencies, but our tours were handled very professionally and we were fully satisfied with the service. In doing so, we used our AAA discount on each tour. The combined savings more than paid for our membership for a full year (regardless of any other AAA benefits).

Some questions came up during our visits, so we looked into the statistics after returning home. The St Louis Gateway Arch has height of 630 feet (192 m). The Eiffel Tower is 1,063 feet (324 m). The London Eye is 443 feet (135 m). Regardless of the height, the views from each are spectacular. The main difference is that London Eye and the Eiffel Tower both have extensive visibility rather than some windows on either side of the arch. Of course, the arch is considerably closer to home.

This concludes our blog. We hope you have enjoyed following our exploits and we will be happy to send you a link the next time we take a cruise and publish another blog.

---