NOTE:
- We have added several Videos for this trip. The videos are shown in both the Menu at the top of the main page, above the slideshow, or to the right in the sidebar.
- Also, we have added Menu Selections for Trip Posts Only, and for Planning Posts Only in the top Menu. These selections will only show the posts from their respective Categories.
We have been home for just over a week, and are just about re-adjusted to the time difference. The first few nights were tough, we were really tired by 9:00 PM, which was 3:00 AM to our bodies trying to adjust from being on European Time.
I had a little trouble sleeping in past 4:30 AM for the first two mornings since I had been consistently getting up between 6:15 AM and 6:45 AM for most of our time in Europe, and now 4:30 AM was like sleeping in until 10:30 AM over there. We always think the time adjustment coming back is harder. Maybe it is partly mental, it seems easier to adjust when we are driven by the excitement of being on vacation, but after coming home, we are just trying to adjust to the time based on normal, everyday life again.
We had some lingering effects from our head colds for a few days after getting back, just a little bit of congestion, and slight coughs, especially after eating meals.
We were very efficient in getting all of our clothes washed and put away, as well as all of our travel gear and suitcases. Of course, we had to mow the yard the day after we got home, it had been over three weeks since it was last cut, and the grass was a bit high out front.
We have rearranged the posts into normal chronological order now that the trip is over, which we always do to make it flow better when reading after the trip is completed.
We will be trying to gather some fun information about the trip, one item will be a total of the steps we walked for the trip, and their corresponding total miles, and an average of these two items per day.
I am contemplating totaling up the costs for the trip, but not sure we really want to see what that is. We already have the total cost for the accommodations we stayed in, and already know this trip cost was a little higher than on our past trips, partly due to us renting more costly apartments, and partly due to the time we were in Switzerland, it is just an expensive place to visit.
We did spent a fair amount on cable cars for several places we visited, again, mostly in Switzerland. They are not cheap to operate and maintain, and that cost is passed off to visitors via ticketing prices.
Overall, we were very satisfied with our accommodations, some were better than others, but in general, the better ones were also more expensive. We were not totally dissatisfied with any place we stayed, and most complaints were minor. We did provide reviews through Booking.com on all of the places we stayed, hoping to help out fellow travelers in the future. We rely heavily on those past reviews to pick out our places to rent.
We have already had some discussions about a future trip Stephanie’s 50th Birthday is next year, and we thought we would do something special for that. We are not sure if future travel will still be impacted as much by Covid, and that does take some of the excitement out of planning another trip. We learned to deal with Covid requirements on this trip, but there were certainly some issues and wearing masks for a good portion of trip was a little uncomfortable at times, as well as being around a lot of people on crowded modes of public transportation.
We certainly know a little more about testing and EU Covid certificates, and maybe that would help us in the future, but until we pick out a destination, it is only guesswork. The uncertainty of variants will also be a concern, as well as future seasonal outbreaks that may impact who is allowed to travel.