Mike D Goes to Europe!

Two weeks after returning home, I have finally finished sorting through all my photos from the trip. So as to break them down into manageable chunks, I have separated them by destination, and in some cases, further separated them by particular sites. Here are the links to all the sets, more or less in chronological order:

Cinque Terre
Nice
Arles
Pont du Gard
Nimes
Paris - general
Notre Dame
The Louvre
Versailles
Bruges
Amsterdam
Rhine River Valley
Marksburg Castle
Rheinfels Castle
Rothenburg ob der Tauber
Medieval Crime Museum
Deutsches Museum
Neuschwanstein
Munich - general
Dachau

ENJOY!!!

Well, I’m back in LA, and still shaking off the last of the jet lag.  I have been home since late Sunday night and I have dreamt about Europe every single night since I got back.

I had an amazing trip, and I want to thank everyone I met along the way for helping to make it the vacation of a lifetime for me (in chronological order):

Gary Denn (aka Gary from Albany), Kerttu and Elina from Finland, David and Gloria from Minnesota, the Irish couple and the Scottish couple I had dinner with in Nice (I don’t remember getting any names), Catherine from Montreal, Candice, Liz and Monica from Chicago (you saved my ass at the Pont du Gard), Anne-Cécile (my new old friend in Paris), Amber at Vlaming Eten en Drinken in Amsterdam, Mr. & Mrs. Gary Coleman (not that Gary Coleman) from San Jose, Axel & wife (name forgotten) & Benji (their dog) from Brussels, Christine from San Francisco, Dave and Catherine from Charlotte, Tatyana and Veronica from Siberia, Nivia from Puerto Rico, Jason from Minnesota, and of course, Bernd, Timo (Bernd’s co-worker) and Anemone, who made sure I had somewhere to go and someone to be with on my birthday.  That was huge, and I will never forget you all for being there with me.

And a special thanks to my friends in LA who introduced me to their friends overseas: Dave Schulz & Lino Wiehen.  Thanks for the hook-ups, guys.  They made a big difference!

And a bonus thank you to my good friends Meredith and John, who gave me some incredibly useful (and some less so [John]) travel-related gifts before I left.

And of course, a big thanks to my Mom & Dad for donating their airline miles so that I could upgrade to Business Class. What an enormous difference. Now I’m spoiled and can never fly Coach again. They also paid for a bunch of the travel gear that I took along. Thank you!

Lastly, let me just say that I brought a lot of photos back with me.  I am working on getting them edited and organized.  When they have been uploaded, I will post the link(s) on this blog.

So, I’m pretty much at the halfway point of my vacation. I have seen a lot of amazing things and walked many miles to see them. Even in good, comfortable shoes, my dogs would be barkin’ at this point. However, the one pair of shoes that I brought with me to Europe, the waterproof ones that were stylish enough for most any occasion, which I purchased explicitly for this trip, could be called many things, but comfortable is not one of them.

After a week in Europe, I have a bruise on the top of my left foot where the shoe’s seem has been digging into it like a clamp. The other foot has a blister on the little toe about as big as the toe itself. If you’ve ever read Steve Martin’s short story, “Cruel Shoes,” you’ve got the idea. I bought some gel pads in Paris, but they were no match for my Ecco Track IV Hydromax instruments of torture.

There comes a time when you have to make adjustments to your game plan, or you may soon find yourself in a no-win situation. For me, that time was Wednesday morning, October 22nd. My new Parisian friend, Anne-Cecile, directed me to the Vieux Campeur (sort of a French REI), where I purchased a comfy new pair of Columbia Sportswear walking shoes. They may not look so nice at a restaurant, but screw it - comfort is the absolute top priority. The tops of these shoes feel like my feet are tucked under a snuggly down comforter.

Of course, the bottoms of my feet still hurt after a day’s trecking around, but I think that is just normal pain - not the cruel and unusual pain I was subjected to before.

If you’re wondering what I did with the old shoes, I left them on the sidewalk in Paris in case some nice homeless person who hates their feet wants them. Maybe I should have attached a note of warning. Oh well. They’ll figure it out.

I am attaching pics of my vanquished foes and my new allies.