Going to Europe for vacation for most Americans who make the trip is an adventure to many destinations, crammed inside of a short period of time. They get to see a lot of tourist spots as they rush from city-to-city and country-to-country to catch as much as they can after spending the time (long flights) and money to make the journey. Europe is, after all, about the same size as the United States with a very large number of countries, each with their own culture, history, and well known sites to see.
We have been blessed with the opportunity to live in Europe for nearly three years and took advantage of the proximity to see and experience this part of the world without the rush of a typical "European Vacation".
In previous posts, I shared experiences in France (Paris for a week) and Italy (Rome and Pisa). Now I want to add the other places we visited and memories.
(We visited Szczawnica, Poland, for our first Spring Break (2012) which is in Southern Poland. We went up the ski lift and walked around the top of the mountain to the Slovakia border, crossing it at times. We have a picture of Patrick sitting on a border marker. We were there for minutes, not days, so I am not sure I count this as visiting Slovakia.)
5 days in Paris, France on our first home-visit (2012) after moving to Europe was a very nice trip to an iconic European city, with museums and landmarks known around the world.
We visited Rome, Italy during fall break (2012) with a day trip to Pisa. More experiences and sites we will remember and will say "I was there" when we see them in movies and TV shows.
The kids asked nicely ("pleaded, cried, and whined") to not have another "museum vacation", so we had to consider how we planned our future trips.
For 2013 Spring Break, we thought we would go to Greece, but travel agencies told us it was too cold and no one goes to Greece in April... fortunately, my (Spanish) Manager gave me another GREAT option... Canary Islands (Lanzarote) , Spain. We had never considered the Canary Islands until the recommendation, but we had a great relaxing vacation (and one tour of the island, lava flows/museums/artists). We stayed in Playa Blanca at a "resort" with a pool and I included meats with our rooms, so we had plenty to eat and no concerns about (the kids) grabbing food at nearly any time of day.
We walked to many areas around town and along the water front, ate at many different restaurants, and swam in the Atlantic Ocean at the beaches. The kids enjoyed the ocean swimming, but typically preferred swimming in the pool (less sand in their shorts and included food nearby).
The islands were created by volcanoes and Lanzarote has one of the largest lava flow fields in the world. There is a restaurant that uses volcanic heat for all of it's cooking. They have some demonstrations of the volcanic heat with holding gravel that was a few inches under the surface and creating mini geysers by dropping some water down a vent hole.
This was a mostly-museum-free vacation and it was very relaxing and fun.
For the summer of 2013 home visit, we stayed in London, England for a week. We mixed in more museums than we had in Lanzarote, but still had relaxing times.
We went to the Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guards. We got there early enough to be standing against the gates and had a great view after a long wait. It was a wonderful experience with the guard band, the pomp and circumstance of their formal changing ceremonies.
We went through the London Science Museum with a temporary Alan Turing exhibit, which was very nice for me. They have many displays for the progress of mechanical and science technologies, space and farming, trains and flight. I think we all had a lot of fun, but Turing's was the best in my opinion.
We went to many fun sites, such as the London Eye and several underground tours and scare shows. Walked through the London Tower (Kaitlyn and I saw the Crown Jewels). We walked across both the London Bridge and the London Tower Bridge, walked through several parks and gardens.
It was a pleasant time and we were happy to be surrounded by a lot of English language (signs and native speakers:)).
Last fall, we traveled to Athens, Greece, staying near the ancient sites for the first 5 days, then moving to the Mediterranean Sea for the end... relaxing again. Being a California kid, I thought going back to Boston was visiting "old cities"; coming to Krakow gave me a whole new perspective of old. I was told by many that Krakow was not old... go to Athens to see old; I agree.
Everything started out pretty good on the first day, seeing the Parthenon and some of the oldest sites. Unfortunately, that first day ended on a sour note... my wallet was picked on the train as we headed back to our hotel. I knew it was taken just as soon as I got off the train. Melanie's purse was unzipped on one side, but that side had nothing important. The hotel was very good about it and there were two restaurants, so we were able to eat and charge to the room. I was on the phone to my credit card companies for several hours; fortunately, my HSBC Premier status was a great benefit as they were able to send me a new credit card urgently and it arrived the morning we were checking out of our hotel.
We were able to continue to visit many sites and enjoy our time in spite of the early challenges.
The final few days were in the coastal area of Athens. We went swimming in the Sea and it was very nice, though the locals thought we were crazy. We went into the swimming pool and I was surprised it did not have a layer of ice on the surface... it was very cold. We walked around that part of town, ate some very good Greek food, and just chilled. Definitely a great way to end a vacation.
I truly appreciated the closeness of travelling to other European countries and the ability to stay in a city for a week or longer without being rushed to see everything. Being in the same (or close) timezone made it easy to adjust to the local time and beginning our vacation.
Many Europeans are able travel to these countries and take it for granted, because they are very close. Many like to travel to lands much further way. It is very good to live during a time where we can get on a plane and be half way around the world in half a day's travel instead of several weeks by boat. Get travelling everyone.
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