Day 31: Sunday, December 27th, 2009 Paris, France. Susan and I take off in the morning to head over to Fat Tire Bikes which is a bike touring company who also sells Paris day passes. Until the previous day, I had forgotten that I had purchased a four day Paris pass. The crappy part is that I have pretty much done all the things I wanted to do when I was in Paris last time, so this pass is now a waste of money for me (and Susan is all set and doesn't need it.) Oh well, it means free metro rides while I'm there, so that's good. Today we head to Versailles. We find the metro that will take us there and some french announcement keeps replaying and a bunch of people are looking lost. ... read more

Day 29: Friday, December 25th, 2009 Amsterdam, Netherlands. Today was just as hard as we knew it would be. After Dad died, I decided to spend that Christmas alone too and it was a horrid decision. Don't know why I thought it would be any different this year with Mom's passing. Thank you one and all for the emails, IM's and phone calls- they made the day bearable. The only thing to report from this day is I said goodbye to the group this morning. Lauren & Teryn took a train to Belgium to their aunt's and the other 5 hopped on the bus to go back to London where they'll all depart in various ways to various places. I walk out to the bus to say goodbye to Enzo, hug Dave and Natasha one more ... read more

Day 27: Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 St. Goar, Germany to Amsterdam, Netherlands. The next morning, I head back to my frozen room (Natasha toughed out the night there), pack, and head downstairs to watch everyone eat breakfast. I find Dave and tell him about our fun and to inform him that he sleeps like the dead. It ends up he wasn't in that room, they switched his room but didn't update the sheet. So, we were either pounding on a door for an empty room or scaring the crap out of some poor tourists who weren't with the group. He says to leave the mattress in Luna and Mana's room and he'd inform the hotel about what happened. I take a few snapshots of the river at very early sunset and then get on the coach ... read more

Day 25: Monday, December 21st, 2009 Prague, Czech Republic This is kind of a free day- there is a boat excursion in the middle of the day but other than that, it's all ours. We head out around 9:30 and walk thru Wenceslas Square and check out the Christmas markets. Same stuff that we saw in Munich and Vienna. The group then splits into two's with some wanting to shop, and others wanting to explore. I join the explore group and we go back to Old Town Square where we get to see the Astronomical Clock in action. There are four main figures on the clock, a guy holding a mirror that represents vanity, a Turk, a skeleton, and a man holding a bag of money (who very "un-PCly" represents the Jews). I didn't see what ... read more

Day 23: Saturday, December 19th, 2009 Vienna, Austria. The bus takes us into town first thing in the morning and we are free to wander until the 1st excursion (a Schnapp's tasting if I remember correctly, needless to say, I didn't sign up for it.) We first walk by the Parliament Building where the statues of Athena and Nike can be seen. Around this time, I start feeling kinda crappy and think that we should have picked up some cold medicine for me as well as Taryn. We wander into the Vienna Christmas Market but given the time, only a few stalls are open. We peak around and decide to move on. Mainly so that we could keep moving in the cold- we were all freezing. We ponder, ever so briefly, at the url=http://www.wien.gv.at/english/c... read more