Travel Tips & Hacks
We had a fabulous day in Luzerne Switzerland. We spent the morning exploring the city and the afternoon we rented a pontoon boat and enjoyed our time out on Lake Luzerne at the base of the Swiss Alps.  It also helped us escape some of the tremendous heat that this area of the world is experiencing right now.  A great day. Highly recommend renting a pontoon boat and spending some time seeing this most picturesque town from the water-side.
Today we visited the Top of Europe which is Jungfraujoch mountain. It is the highest point in Europe at nearly 12,000 feet. We also visited an ice palace that is truly unique as the ice is over 1000 years old. Check out the ice sculpture photos. While we enjoyed visiting the Top of Europe the amount of time it took us to get there (3 hours each way) was not worth the 2 hours we had at the top of the mountain.
We spent the afternoon biking 30 miles around Lake Brienzersee. The entire bike ride had incredible views. We also rode out to Giessbach Falls to see Mother Nature in action. It was a harder ride than we anticipated (4500 feet of elevation change) but we all agreed very much worth it. Going to be sore tomorrow. We highly recommend renting bikes and cycling the lake.
We went Paragliding this morning over the God given, hand-painted Interlaken landscape. Truly breath-taking. We used Paragliding Interlaken as the service and they could not have been any better.
Today was one of those bucket list excursion days for us. We went up to Glacier 3000, a 10,000 ft high mountain, which is located just outside of Montreux Switzerland. Glacier 3000 has the longest suspension bridge between two mountains in the world. We had a lot of fun crossing it. 😉. We saw the Matterhorn. In addition, we did another first, which was take an alpine coaster down the Swiss Alps. Just a very fun experience! 🇨🇭
A must see is Tiffany going down the mountain on the Alpine coaster.  It will definitely make you laugh. 😀. Bailey is controlling the coaster speed and she never used the brake. Haha.
Truly an amazing day!
We highly recommend visiting Glacier 3000!
A beautiful day in Montreux, Switzerland. We landed in Geneva around 9:45 am this morning and took a train from Geneva to our hotel in Montreux. Two thumbs up for the Grand Suiss Majestic Hotel. Located right on lake Geneva with great views of Lake Geneva and the staff is excellent. We enjoyed the day exploring Montreux, and visiting Chillon Castle which was constructed from the 12th to 16th centuries. It is the most visited historical landmark in Switzerland.
Tiffany and I spent the day biking (about 20 miles) through and around Paris today and just had a fun and relaxing day with no defined agenda (which is pretty different for us when on vacation).
Some highlights include;
We learned that there were multiple smaller copies of Lady Liberty made and one is erected on the Seine river in Paris. It is 38 feet tall versus the 310 feet version in New York City.
Paris has a Central Park counterpart called Bois De Boulogne which is a recreational park that was built in 1852 that provides walking paths, a large lake where you can take out row-boats, etc. Central Park in New York was built in 1858 and the French park served as an inspiration to provide the inhabitants of a growing city a recreational outlet. Bois De Boulogne is about 2.5 times bigger than Central Park in NYC.
Paris is working to have a swimmable Seine river by the end of 2024 for the Olympic summer games. If they accomplish this fact it would truly be amazing.
We had a fabulous day doing everything Versailles. In addition to the French Palace and Gardens we also visited Trianon and Hamlet which are also on Versaille’s property. Hamlet is an original re-creation of an Austrian village that Marie Antoinette had built. She had it built on Versailles property to remind her of home (she was Austrian)and lived there versus the palace for many years.
Fun fact #1: One of the famous rooms in the palace is the Hall of Mirrors. There are 387 mirror panels in the room. Each mirror panel was the cost of a house at the this time in history.
Fun fact #2: Louie the 14th built Versailles, Louie the 15th enjoyed Versailles and Louie the 16th paid for Versailles with his life. All of this happened over a span of 109 years. Versailles was “abandoned” for 10 years after the French Revolution (1789).
A couple of other amazing things; one of the enclosed photos is of a clock in Louis the 14th bedroom. It is still a fully functioning clock that has a cuckoo that comes out and crowns him king every hour on the hour. The clock is 380 years old.
In the Austrian Village that Marie Antoinette built on Versailles property, you will see she has lined one of the houses with planter pots. If you look closely at one of the photos I enclosed, it has her cipher right in the middle MA. These pots are 380 years old, custom made for her and they look great.
The billiards table belonged to King Louie the 16th. The game table hasn’t changed much.
Ended the day having dinner at an outside cafe in Versailles with Versailles in the background. Perfect.
We just wrapped up an incredible day exploring the magnificent highlights of Paris! 🇫🇷🎉 We did over 20,000 steps today which is 15 miles of walking and we are definitely feeling it😉. From the iconic Eiffel Tower to the Louvre Museum, visiting Notre Dame (renovations from the 2019 fire damage will be completed by December, 2024), taking a stroll through the Jardin Des Tuileries and Champ DeMars, seeing the Grand Palace, walking the grand avenue (Champs Elysees)was a shopper’s paradise, boating down the river Seine, indulging in the food, visiting the Arch of Triomphe were just some of the highlights….we just LOVE this city ❤️. Two fun facts….
#1: There is an obelisk in the Paris city square that comes from Egypt. It is the oldest monument in Paris at 3300 years old. Photo enclosed.
#2: Every 7 years the Eiffel Tower is painted. However, they learned that they have to actually pressure wash off the old paint as the structure cannot handle all the weight from being painted every 7 years. The first color was red.
Tiffany and I took an unplanned/last minute trip to Paris which is one of our favorite world cities to visit and promote. Today was everything about Eiffel and learning how to navigate the French Capital via their train system. We circled this tower multiple times, sampled food and ate at the restaurants around the tower, reviewed the history, went to the 2nd level on the tower as well as to the Summit which is something we have never done before. The Summit on the tower provides the BEST view of the city. A FUN FACT….Americans are taught that the French gave us the Statue of Liberty. That is technically not wrong but to be more specific the French government contributed 18% of Lady Liberty and Gustave Eiffel contributed the remaining 82% out of his personal funds. He was also one of two principal designers for the Statue of Liberty. I especially liked Gustave’s office at the very top of the tower where he would host prestigious guests. One such guest was Thomas Alva Edison who presented him with a first edition phonograph player created by Edison. Weather was fabulous. A GREAT day!
A 3 minute video of Xplor Adventure Park outside of Cancun, Mexico.
We spent yesterday at the Xplor adventure theme park located in the Riviera Maya region of Mexico near the city of Playa del Carmen. It is one of our favorite outdoor adventure parks that provides customers with a top zip-lining experience (14 zip-lines), underground river swimming, rafting and driving ATVs. If you visit this area of Mexico we highly recommend you visit the Xplor park. One of the many things we like about the park is they provide you an all inclusive experience which includes a great food experience.
A perfect day on the Wonder of the Seas with Royal Caribbean.
A perfect day in St. Maarten with Royal Caribbean.
A perfect day in St. Thomas with Royal Caribbean.
A perfect day in CocoCay with Royal Caribbean.
We spent the day in Bruges, Belgium. If you visit Belgium we highly recommend! Some of the highlights included a boat ride on the canals, we visited a Basilica which is a Catholic Church blessed by the Pope. This particular church displays the blood of Jesus Christ, we visited the first stock exchange in the world which opened in 1531, we visited one of the first medieval hospitals and learned that hospitals got their names as travelers would go to the hospitals when they arrived in Bruges for a bed and food…hence the name hospitality. Bruges is also home to the only beer pipeline. The beer is brewed in the city and then piped 3.2 KM outside the city where it is distributed. Just a great day!
Our first day in Belgium was great. Brussels is the capital of Belgium, principal seat of the Belgian Royal Family, and capital of the European Union as well as the home of NATO headquarters.
We took a tour of the city and it’s highlights. President Zelensky of Ukraine was speaking today at the European Union in Brussels. Highlights of the day included hot Belgian waffles with mango ice cream on top, Belgian beer and the many historical places we stopped today including the Atomium. The Atomium was built in 1957 for the world fair and was supposed to be taken down just like the Eiffel tower after the Paris world fair. Well, like the Eiffel tower it was never taken down. Each sphere is 162 billion times larger than an atom.
Today was an over-the-top day! We spent the morning with our tour guide “El Chappo”. Together we visited the Blue mountains which is an Aussie national park that’s equivalent to the United States. Inside the blue mountains, we visited an Aussie rainforest, the three sisters mountain, and Katooma Falls to name a few. Truly beautiful!
Tour Company:
A fabulous day in Tauranga, New Zealand. We did a trip out to Hobbiton where the 3 Lord of the Rings and 3 Hobbit movies were filmed.
Truly amazing, 2000 people a day visit. the movie set which was permanently built on this Farmer’s property.
Hey, a fun fact, Peter Jackson’s team (the Director) visited the farm 22 years ago after surveying the property from the air. The farmer was watching a soccer match while the director’s team was knocking on the farmer’s front door. The only reason the farmer answered the door was there was a break in the match.
After the first three films the set people tore the set down. When they came back several years later to film the 3 Hobbit films the farmer’s family asked them to leave it. It took 1.5 years to build the set for 12 days of filming and 10 minutes of onscreen time. Crazy. Peter Jackson was adamant that people needed to believe that Hobbiton existed…otherwise they would not believe in the rest of the story. The expansiveness of the set is a little mind boggling as it took us 1.5 hours to walk.
Truly an impressive site to see! A shout out to New Zeelandier tours. I had read the book and watched all the movies, but the family watched the movies on the plane ride to Australia. Even though they didn’t have a deep, rich understanding of the background of the six films they all agreed it was well worth the time and a great site to see!
Spent the day exploring Sydney and the beaches with a private tour guide. Some Aussie fun facts.
Was started as a penal colony by the UK. The UK sent over 250K criminals during a 60 year period (1780’s to 1840’s). Keep in mind if you were hungry and stole an apple you could have been sent to Australia.
The Opera house is not white. It is actually tan and has over 1M tiles. The lights make it look white.
The Opera house design was selected out of a reject pile of possible designs.
The coat of arms for Australia is the Emu and Kangaroo. Neither of these animals can walk backwards given their leg tendon design. They are “always going forward”.
To avoid shark attacks every one of their many beaches has metal netting that goes down to the ocean floor some up to 180 feet to protect beach goers from possible attacks.
On Memorial Day an Aussie will befriend an American and buy them a round of drinks to say thanks for our support during WW2.
Australia has 16 of the world’s 20 venomous snakes. You wear long pants as the fangs can’t pe*****te the clothing.
They have the huntsman spider that will crawl across a wall in the middle of night. The spider is 5 inches wide. Our guide has it happen a couple of times a year in his home.
Australia has a population of 27M. 5.5M in Sydney alone. Australia is nearly 80% the size of US but with less than 10% of the US population.
There are 60M kangaroos in Australia nearly 2 kangaroos for each citizen. Looking forward to seeing some tomorrow.
Truly a great day! Loved Bondi beach!
An absolutely fabulous aerial tour of Sydney, beaches and the cliffs this morning! 🚁 We took a helicopter tour over the Sydney Harbor 😍 We saw over 10 different beaches (one of them being a birds eye view of the famous Bondi beach), the highly talked about Sydney opera house, and the Sydney harbor bridge!
Tiffany, Bailey and I left yesterday from Atlanta and flew to Sydney Australia. This is a bucket list trip for our family and we are happy that Maddie is joining us in two days. We are spending the next three weeks exploring Australia and New Zealand.
First off, the flight from Atlanta to Sydney was about 23 hours with a stop in Los Angeles. We were all in agreement that the flight was much better than we had expected even though it was like flying to Europe, flying back home, and then back to Europe again in one trip 😉
Two things stand out to all of us with the Aussies. First off, in all of our travels we have never met a happier kinder more go out of your way group of people at every level. It’s truly made for a phenomenal first impression of this country.
Secondly, I have never seen weather that can change so quick and so differently in such a short period of time. In the span of four hours the temperature dropped 15° went up 15°, and went back down 15° and for one brief moment lightly rained. During that same timeframe it was partly cloudy, went to pure sunny, went back to partly cloudy, and then back to pure sunny. Very different.
We arrived this morning in Sydney at 8:30 AM and we weren’t sure after the flight if we were going to be up for any type of excursions so we didn’t book anything but surprisingly, we did well on the trip and were energized to do some exploring. As such, we walked Sydney, the botanical gardens and ate some great food on the water and found it to be an incredibly beautiful, lively and fun city on the water. 😍 Family Travel Junkies
We are excited as we are doing a new vacation first. Most of you know we are big ocean cruisers but we are doing a river cruise on Avalon on the Danube and Rhine rivers over the next 9 days in Europe.  On top of this, it will be my Mom‘s first time to Europe and we are super excited that she is joining us!
We’ve been up for the past 28 hours and flew in today to Nuremberg Germany, and did a tour of Nuremberg. My Mom is doing GREAT!
Enclosed are some photos of our excursion today at the Nuremberg Castle which was built in 1087. 
We had an absolutely fantastic time today in Bamberg, Germany! Bamberg is a small quintessential German town from the fifth century. This town and its people were fortunate enough not to be bombed during World War II, and all of the Barouqe and Bavarian architecture was maintained. When you think of a small German town you are thinking of Bamberg. Bamberg is a UNESCO Heritage protected site which means the exteriors of the town cannot be changed without special permissions.
We did a walking tour of the entire town, and my mom with her trusty walking stick did outstanding! Apple strudel, and pizza were the food highlights. Tomorrow we are going to have some Bavarian beer.
A GREAT day. 😎
Today we did two 1/2 day excursions in two different towns. The first stop was Rothenberg, Germany and the second excursion was Wurzburg, Germany.
Rothenberg is a fairytale type of town from the 13th century. It has the honor of having one of the most photographed street intersections in the world. When you see our photos you will understand why. I put the professional photo of the intersection side by side with the girls in the photo. We could have spent an entire day in Rothenberg. Very picturesque. The town has a population of 11,000 but supports 6 million tourists a year…crazy.
In Wurzburg we visited the Palace which is a smaller copy of Versailles. It was the home for the Catholic Bishop in the early 1700’s.
Truly a great day. Looking forward to a drink and some good food this evening on the ship as we all did a lot of walking today.
Today we visited a quaint little town located in Miltenburg, Germany. The town was built between 1190 and 1400. We did some shopping, toured the town, hiked up to the castle and did some cycling. Tomorrow we are visiting Frankfurt. Mom is still knocking the ball out of the park and being a walking machine. 👍🏻
Fell in love with Frankfurt today. We toured and cycled this beautiful modern and old city today.
A couple highlights. WW2 largely destroyed the city. St.Paul’s church survived. Enclosed is a photo of the destruction. A credit to the local government in working to recreate the old town feel of Frankfurt while also embracing modern city design.
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A 3 minute video of Xplor Adventure Park outside of Cancun, Mexico.
All of the vacation excursions we have done over the past 20+ years have been great and memorable in some form or manner. However, there are a smaller percentage of excursions that simply are spectacular and rise to the top of being extraordinary such as riding camels out to the pyramids, para-gliding off the top of the Grand Tetons and fishing in the Gulf of Alaska where we caught a Halibut every minute for 30 minutes straight to name a few of these special experiences. We were blessed to have another top excursion experience today in Talkeetna, Alaska where we flew up to Mount Denali in a Dehaviland Otter-8 seater airplane and landed on a glacier on Mount Denali in the middle of nowhere. It will likely be the closest we ever get to landing on an untouched land. Less than 8,000 people a year experience what we got to today. The views were absolutely breathtaking and jaw dropping and we all unanimously agreed this excursion alone is the reason to visit Denali. Hope you enjoy the video.
Alaska - Day 1: We arrived in Anchorage yesterday evening safely after an 8-hour direct flight from Atlanta. Looking forward to the next two weeks of exploring this beautiful but remote state. I will say with all the media hype we have been hearing on summer travel we didn’t experience anything like the news staged us for. There was no picketing at the airport by Delta pilots, baggage check-in lines were only 5-10 minute waits (no waits at skycap baggage check-in) and we got through security(with Clear and TSA) in 10 minutes and Bailey who does not have TSA or Clear made it through the normal lines in 10 minutes. This was Friday afternoon prime time. We found the Delta and Atlanta airport experience to be GREAT as usual…..and then there was good Gluten Free beer in Anchorage. I’m in heaven. Looking forward to our guided family biking tour this afternoon around Anchorage. Tomorrow we take the 7-hour Dome train up to Denali. ~Jim
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