End of the Adventure

May 25

Well, faithful followers, this is the last day of our 2nd European Adventure. The train is pulling out of Sundsvall (so sad to leave Maria and Martin) and in a little over 3 hours we’ll be in Stockholm. We’re getting off the train at Arlanda and staying in a hotel near the airport. Since we have a 9am flight tomorrow it’s much easier this way.

What can we say about an adventure that’s lasted 3 months? It was a time filled with extremes. We went from almost 5 straight weeks of cold, rainy weather to the last 6 weeks of mostly sunny, summer weather. We literally went from the far southwest corner of Europe to only a couple hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle. We pretty much crossed the entire western part of the continent east to west. If you draw a straight line south from Sundsvall it would go through the middle of Poland, Slovakia and Hungry. Of course, we did the trip on a northeast angle and flew from several points, so we didn’t see all of Europe, but we covered a lot of territory. We visited 10 countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and Sweden and one British territory, Gibraltar.

We saw gigantic, beautiful cathedrals and small, but lovely churches. The Catholic cathedrals tended to be very ornate while the Protestant churches, while less ornate, were still beautiful. The smallest church we visited was in Nazere, Portugal. It was about 20 feet wide and just about as long.

Of course, there was beautiful art. We saw the French Impressionists, Italian Renaissance and Van Gogh in Paris

And the Dutch Masters in Amsterdam.

And in Paris we saw artists at work.

We visited just about every WWI and WWII museum, monument, memorial and cemetery in Europe. Well, probably not but we did see the biggest and most important ones along our route.

We saw the spot where the war to end all wars came to an end, and the document that ended the next war.

We caught a little of the Napoleonic Wars.

In Norway we went back even further to the middle ages.

And then there were the castles, palaces and chateaux; some over the top and some fairly stark.

We visited some of the biggest cities in Europe, some tiny but beautiful villages and everything in between.

We loved the outdoor cafes as well as the beer, wine and food that went with them.

For entertainment we…..

We saw windmills in Belgium and Sweden but not the Netherlands.

We traveled by plane, car, bus, train, ferry, cargo ship and wagon. We cruised the Rhine, the Seine, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. We went on canal rides in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

In addition to many different Airbnb flats and hotels and one resort, we slept in a Chateau in France and a tiny cabin on the cruise down the Norwegian Fjords.

And over the last 10 days, we spent time with family.

Part of the reason for this trip (other than the fact that we had no place else to live) was to see if we might want to “winter over” in Portugal or southern Spain. The answer…. absolutely not. It’s way colder and wetter than we thought. Granted, just like everywhere else, they had an unusually bad winter, but it wasn’t warm enough to be someplace we’d want to stay all winter. Besides, the golf is way too expensive.

We had also toyed with the idea of selling virtually everything we own and becoming nomads for a few years. The answer…absolutely not. We moved out of our Chicago house on 9/15/17 and have been on the move pretty much ever since. While we’ve seen some amazing things, it’s just too tiring (not to mention expensive) to do that for any length of time. So far, the place we think is a best fit for us for winter is Green Valley AZ. But there are a few other places we want to check out so who knows what will happen.

So…..what’s next for us. After what is sure to be a long day of travel on Saturday, we started getting ready to move into our house. We get the keys on the 31st and have to get new carpet in the bedrooms, have several rooms painted and get the window coverings cleaned before we can move in. We’ve been living out of suitcases for the better part of 8 months, so as soon as we get the keys, we’re moving in. We won’t have any furniture but we have 2 air mattresses in the storage unit that are pretty comfortable so we’ll sleep on those until we can get the move done.

As for travel, we’ll go someplace close for our Sept 4th anniversary. We’d like to winter in AZ again next year, but as you can imagine the last 8 months of homelessness has been very expensive so we’ll have to see if the budget will allow another 3 months away from home next winter. Our next European adventure will be in 2019 when we head back to Italy. This time it will be south of Naples and Sicily. It’s 15 months away but it will be here before we know it.

So, until then dear friends, thanks again for traveling with us. We hope you enjoyed our adventure as much as we did. Love to all…. Lynn and Peter