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After
I completed my Bachelor's Degree at the University of Washington
with majors in Classical Studies (the world of Ancient Greece and
Rome) and History in 2004, I wanted to spend some quality time in
Europe seeing the places and things I had learned about, and to share
those experiences with Pete. He's from Switzerland, so we go to
Europe often. We usually spend some time visiting his family
there, and rush through another region in Europe, cramming as much as
possible into two or three weeks. This time we wanted to make a
leisurely tour around Europe with no time limits. Pete wanted
to visit his friends in Sri Lanka and Vietnam, so we included Asia in
our itinerary.
We
had no commitment to Seattle and had no idea where we would be at
the end of the trip - we could stay in Europe, return to Seattle, or
start over someplace else. We had a general idea of what we
wanted to see, but were totally open to new ideas as we went along,
also getting ideas from other travelers' experiences. It was
not the most time-efficient trip; we went to places as they appealed
to us, not necessarily the most direct route (returning to Europe
after a few months in Asia, for example).
In
February, 2005, we quit our jobs, gave up our apartment, put
everything in storage and took off for Europe. We were able to
use Pete's old apartment in his parents' house in Eastern Switzerland
as our base while we were in Europe, so we could always come back
there and regroup, plan our next adventures, organize photos and do
some laundry.
We
flew to some places (Egypt, Portugal, Turkey, Asia, Greece and
Scotland), drove through some areas (France, Benelux, Scandinavia,
Germany, around Switzerland), took ferries (along the Norwegian
coast) and trains (Berlin, Prague, Munich, Northern Italy, Rome and
Paris). We took a guided tour of Turkey, stayed with friends in
Sri Lanka, and went with friends of Pete around Vietnam.
Otherwise, we were independent travellers.
It
was a great trip with many nice memories to look back on. We
don't have a "favorite" place because there were so many
great places. We took more than 28,000 photos (there are about
3,300 of our "highlights" in this website). "PETE
- STOP - TURN AROUND - KODAK MOMENT" was one of my favorite
phrases when driving. We cropped or modified only a handful of
these photos. We were on the road for 17 months and came back
to Seattle in July, 2006.
Each
of the photo albums below has a link to the background notes for
that area. Enjoy!! |
