Even more than five years after we took our 4 1/2 month around the world trip with our girls in 2003 to 2004, we still get questions about what the circumstances were leading up to that journey and why we decided to do it. We received our initial inspiration from several sources.
We have been at sea for three days now. We are now approximately halfway between New York and Southampton, at about 600 miles south of Greenland.
Today, we visited the Royal Observatory in the town of Greenwich (as in “Greenwich Mean Time”) just outside of London. This is the location of the Prime Meridian or Longitude 0 degrees.
When we went on a walking tour in London, we saw some interesting things. We saw the Rosetta Stone and many cool old works of ancient times.
We took a 12 hour all night train from Bangkok to Surat Thani, on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. From there, we boarded a ferry for a five hour trip to Ko Pha Ngan.
We arrived in Paris to cold, winter weather. Sandy’s parents met us there and we spent the next few days sightseeing in Paris and in Chartres, about one hour south by train.
We are currently riding the Eurostar train between London and Paris. We left about two hours ago and are now 18 minutes into our 25-minute underground crossing of the English Channel.
We took a three-week trip to five countries in Europe, using the train and bus as our primary modes of transportation. Our children were six and nine during this trip, which was their first taste of extended international travel in a hostel setting.
Munich was our first stop on our Europe trip. We stayed with a family friend and spent time in the city center as well as a church and beer garden just out of town. We then began our time in Switzerland by visiting Lucerne.
We spent four days in the heart of Switzerland taking several different hikes. These ranged from day hikes to overnighting at two different huts nestled in the Swiss Alps.
