A recap and prospectus

Since arriving in Dublin twenty days ago we've traveled through:  Ireland, England, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Monaco, Italy and, today, into Switzerland.  For me this has been a different trip than the one Janet and I took twelve years ago.  We traveled by bus and train, whereas Cam and I have been driving (since Amsterdam) and have racked up something a little more than 4,000 km (2,575 miles), and we have yet to travel through: Austria, Germany and back to the Netherlands.

We have to leave the car in Germany (Dresden) and go to Prague to see Andrej by train, since we aren't allowed to take the car into eastern Europe.  We expect to visit with Andrej for about three days, then return to Dresden for a quick visit to Berlin then the final trek back to Amsterdam.

We were originally going to make the trip back to Dublin for our flight home the way we came -- buses between Amsterdam and London, then London and Dublin, but we can fly from Amsterdam to Dublin for a lot less than the cost of buses, and be there in less than two hours.

Cam has been doing the bulk of the posting to this blog (good for him1) as I was doing the bulk of the driving when we started out.  He has driven some, and done it well, but he isn't actually permitted to since he's under twenty-five, so we've needed to cool that except when it's safe.  We have a plan:  if he gets into an accident, he's to drag me from the passengers seat and put me on the ground on the driver's side, then run around to passenger's side and lay on the ground and moan.

Internet availabilty hasn't been nearly what I expected (or hoped) it would be.  There have been only a couple of places where we were able to find free and unlimited wireless connections, some places where we could a limited amount of free time, and some places where there was no internet at all, wireless or otherwise.  The paid time hasn't been cheap either, €1 for a half-hour or an hour, up to €15 for 24 hours.  We haven't paid for it very often.

Cam wrote a long post tonight that describes our stay at Hyeres in France, our brief stop in Monaco. our stay in Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre, and our drive into the Swiss Alps, so I needn't add very much to that.

We're just back now from a very nice dinner here at the hotel we chose for tonight's stay in the Swiss alps, a very nice hotel in a most picturesque valley (at an altitude of 3,000 feet) that mirrors the mental picture of the Alps that I already held.

We have each posted a lot of pictures on our Facebook pages.  Cam's are here.  Mine are here.