Czech Republic and the Baltic 2019

The wedding celebration may have ended last night, but family festivities continued today. This year marks the centennial of the births of both of Nancy’s parents, so she and her sisters decided to hold an informal commemoration while family members were gathered this weekend. Tracy, who lives in Provo, invited...

At first we thought Nat was kidding when we got a text from him last week inviting family members to join him for an open-water swim at 7:00 on the morning of his wedding day, but then we realized that this is Nat, the dedicated triathlete who never lets a...

This morning we woke up when we woke up, which was about 7:00 a.m. We are grateful that our bodies are allowing us hours of sleep and wakefulness that aren’t too far out of alignment with what’s appropriate for the Mountain Time Zone. Lisa and Ed had already left, so...

First, some background. Sometime in January, our son Nat informed us that he and the woman he had been dating for over a year had decided to get married. We were thrilled, of course. He said they had not settled on a wedding date yet, but it would be sometime...

Attempting to go back to sleep is futile when sunlight has been streaming through the gaps around the blackout curtains for a couple of hours already, so at 5:45 a.m. we gave up and got up. Packing for the flight home required some reorganization and coordination (“Do you have room...

Besides us, the only people from our original tour group who are still in Denmark are Eric and Pam, with whom we enjoyed breakfast. Mark and Lynn have not yet checked out of the hotel, but they left early to catch a ferry to Sweden, where they plan to spend...

The clatter of roller bags being dragged across the cobblestoned courtyard behind the hotel at 5:00 a.m. immediately dispelled any illusions we might have had upon waking that we were still on a cruise ship, silently gliding into port. A quick look around confirmed that we were no longer in...

Last night we had been instructed to put our luggage in the hall outside our doors by 6:00 a.m. Not wanting to wear the same clothes two days in a row, we got up early enough to shower and dress before saying good-bye to our bags. As it turned out,...

Today’s schedule included no bus tours, no walks along cobblestoned lanes, and no attempts to cram a thousand years of history into a single day. Our sightseeing involved only the views of open sea and sky while the Star Breeze continues traversing the Baltic Sea from Tallinn to Copenhagen, a...

This morning was the coolest and most blustery that we have had so far on the trip—too chilly to eat breakfast on the open veranda, despite the fleece blankets offered on the back of each chair and the luscious hot chocolate, which many of us have become accustomed to ordering....