I woke up this morning thinking that it was the last day of my sabbatical. Throughout my life, the last days of a vacation have always triggered sadness or even mourning. I would miss my summer vacation before it was even over. I’ve always dreaded the loss of personal freedom that comes with obligatory work […]

This is about our time in Turkey which was in November to early December of 2023. After bouncing around Europe every 4-7 days, we were ready to settle down. Take a break. Maybe even stop being tourists for a while. As we had reached our 90 days in the Schengen Zone, we needed to head […]

I’ve been a closet nerd since I was 13 years old. Back in 1994, I discovered a collectable card game called Magic the Gathering and I’ve been obsessed ever since. If you aren’t familiar, imagine baseball cards that you can play a card game with. Except, instead of hitters and pitchers, the cards feature elves […]

We lost Asher at the Parthenon. There were at least 10,000 tourists and guides walking around the Acropolis hill in Athens. Our group had radio headsets so we could hear our guide’s commentary. I had Chiara on my shoulders, and I was following Alex with Angie following me. Alex was following someone else in our […]

I was robbed on the metro the hour we arrived in Rome. Our train from Florence had arrived at Roma Termini and we switched to the metro to get to our apartment. When our metro train arrived it was already impossibly full. We were sweaty and tired and didn’t know when the next train would […]

Somehow we narrowed down our time in Italy to just 3 of our favorite destinations. Venice because we thought the kids would enjoy it, Tuscany/Florence area where we could visit a few cities from one central place, and then Rome, to show the kids Vatican City. This post will focus on the first two of […]

In my post on 100 days of travel, I recounted the challenges of our travel day from Portugal to Spain. I’m finally ready to add a fun epilogue to that story and then fill in the details of our 12 days in Spain. We also have another journal entry from Asher to round it out! […]

The whirlwind first half of our world tour has come to an end. Our plan was to spend Christmas in Bethlehem, but plans change. Please join us in praying for peace in Israel. We are thrilled to be back in Minnesota with Grandma Susan at her beautiful new house. The past six months have taught […]

Spain and Portugal (the Iberian Peninsula) were two high priority destinations for the trip from the first draft of our itinerary. In the combined 10+ trips to Europe that we’ve gone on, neither Angie nor I had ever been to Spain or Portugal. The appeal included the castles, warm weather, a fascinating history, and a […]

To those of you who religiously check our blog for updates, I apologize about how infrequently we post. We’ve been mostly posting in chronological order. In another tab I have a draft about our time in Portugal that will hopefully be posted “soon”. At the moment, we are in Istanbul, Turkey and we left Portugal […]