Czech Republic and the Baltic 2019

Remembering the delicious-looking French toast Michael had ordered from the à la carte menu for breakfast yesterday, Nancy decided that this was the morning she would do the same rather than going through the buffet line. What kind of French toast will they be serving today? she wondered as she...

Saint Petersburg’s importance as Russia’s commercial link with northern Europe became evident to us this morning as the Star Breeze made its way on and on and on through the port, passing all manner of container ships, barges, tugboats, cranes, loading docks, warehouses, and piles of scrap metal, toward the...

When we opened our curtains onto Helsinki this morning, Nancy did a double-take. Dominated by a ferris wheel, the view initially appeared very much like the scene she sees in Cincinnati every week from the windows of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, where she volunteers as a FamilySearch consultant....

At 7:00 a.m. Eastern European time, we made port in Mariehamn. (To say the name correctly, you must pronounce every letter individually.) This picturesque town of about 12,000 is the capital of Åland, a group of islands about midway between Sweden and Finland. Åland is an autonomous territory within Finnish sovereignty,...

Breakfast at the Lady Hamilton made up for the discomforts we had suffered in our room. First, the eating area was blessedly air conditioned; had we known that last night, our whole group just may have brought our pillows down and slept on the floor under the tables. Then, there...

We were startled awake by the alarm at 4:30 a.m., although it didn’t seem that early because the sun was already up. We hurried to finish packing because we had to put our luggage outside our door by 5:30 for the porters to pick up, and then be downstairs, ready...

Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Although the Allied invasion occurred on the shores of Normandy, it had a profound effect on central Europe as well. All of us should be grateful that neither the Nazis nor the Allied bombs that torched Dresden less than a year later ever...

We had not realized that the sun would rise at 4:00 a.m. and wake us up despite the dark curtains we had pulled across our windows. When Michael got out of bed at 5:20, Nancy rolled over and asked, “Are you giving up, too?” So Nancy rose and showered, and...

Paris has been the hub for four of our last five trips abroad, so we expected to know our way around Charles de Gaulle when we arrived about 8:00 a.m. local time. This morning, however, the airport seemed less familiar because as soon as we went through the initial security...

We were ready to go well before Dani’s white Suburban pulled into our driveway about 1:20 p.m. By now we have packed for trips often enough that once we had checked weather forecasts for Prague and the Baltic region, there were few decisions to be made. Or at least, that’s...