Kelly and I got back this week from an amazing trip to Europe with a group from Liberty University. It was great to see some old friends, make new ones, and to see some amazing new places.

I may get the chance to put a few pictures up, but for now I’ll just tell you how the trip went.
- we began the trip with a weekend in DC, where the airport for our group’s departure was. It was fantastic to visit our nation’s capital again, to see the monuments and museums, and to meet some friends who live around there.
- We made our overnight flight to Austria from DC, and it was challenging with unhappy babies on our 7 hour flight, but the service provided by the Luftansa crew was superb. After changing planes in Frankfurt, we continued on to Vienna and got to tour that amazing city.
- In Vienna we saw one of the palaces of the Hapsburgs, some spectacular churches, and we also sampled some great local cuisine.
- Our next stop was Budapest. This was truly a unique experience, being my first visit to eastern Europe. We saw some great sights in the city and cruised on the Danube. Budapest was one of the unique places we visited, with such a different language and currency (theirs was almost 200 to our 1, so it was like 450 for a coke). Still, I was amazed at the dominance of our American culture even in eastern Europe. They had American clothes, music, and food.
- From Budapest we stopped in Bratislava, Slovakia for the afternoon. This was one of my favorite stops because we got to see a great part of town, and talk to some fantastic people. After the brief stop there we continued on to Prague.
- Prague was a very historic city. We visited Prague castle, the St Charles Bridge, and toured much of the old city. Here we saw some very old churches, an historic clock in the city square, and even took a ghost tour in the evening to learn more about the city.
- From Prague we traveled to Berlin, stopping for lunch in Dresden. Dresden was an amazing city, and I would love to return again to see the palaces and museums. I was happy this time just to try a local brat and learning to order ice cream in German.
- Berlin was one of my favorite places on our trip. We saw checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall, visited some historic buildings including one bombed out church, the Reichstag (the home of the German parliament), the Brandenburg Gate, and several other places. We missed out on the Pergamon Museum and a few others (Berlin is known for their many museums). There was much to see and not enough time.
-From Berlin, we took a night train to Paris. It was great to wake up to the French countryside, and views of little villages with old churches at their center. I didn’t get pictures of these because it was one of those things cameras can’t capture (especially from a train traveling about 100 mph). In Paris we briefly visited the Louvre. We also saw Notre Dame Cathedral, we cruised on the river Seine at night after visiting the Eiffel Tower. Amazing. There were many new tastes, sights, and sounds there. Paris was another great place, though perhaps my favorite part was our visit to Montmartre (our guide pronounced it “Mamatra”) and seeing the Sacre Couer (the Basilica of the Sacred Heart).
- After Paris, we traveled to Calais, where we crossed the English channel into England. From there we went immediately to Canterbury.
- On our way from Canterbury to London, the bus broke down –not fun–but we managed to make it to our hotel in London in time to go to bed before midnight. The one day in London was not nearly enough, but we did get to see several sights, including touring the British Museum and St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Sadly, after that it was time to return home.

We arrived back home and were able to recover from our vacation on sunday and monday.