Europe 2010

All my worldly belongings for the next 80 days.

After two long years of withdrawal from medieval cathedrals, we finally get to return to Europe tomorrow! I'll be traveling for 2.5 months and will be joined by two different companions along the way: my husband for the first part and a college friend for the second.

The trip is very much focused on research and photography for Sacred Destinations, so it will be a very busy itinerary. I'll once again be chronicling some of our adventures here, with lots of photos of course!

An overview of the route, which we'll do counter-clockwise.

David and I are flying to Amsterdam tomorrow and will spend the first night in Leiden, which is only about 20 minutes by train from the Amsterdam airport. The next night (our 6th wedding anniversary) will be in Brussels, then we'll have a long travel day: train from Brussels to Calais (3.5 hours), ferry from Calais to Dover (1.5 hours), rent a car in Dover, and drive to Canterbury (half hour).

We're planning to drive around Britain for about a month, making a big vertical loop: up the east coast all the way to the northern Scottish islands, then back down along the west side. Lots of cathedrals, rural churches, museums, abbey ruins, and prehistoric stone circles along the way. Our last stop will be London, where we leave the rental car.

In London, among many other wonderful things, we're hoping to see one of our proudest published photos: a view of Oxford printed extra-large as part of a temporary exhibition on the Thames River that has been displayed on the Tower Bridge all summer. The website says the exhibition runs "through the autumn," which is rather vague, but hopefully it will still be up in early October.

After London, we'll take another ferry back to France, pick up another rental car, and make a loop around Normandy that ends in Paris. David will leave from Paris to Amsterdam for his flight home, and I'll see a bunch of Gothic cathedrals east of Paris, then head south to Switzerland.

After Switzerland I'll spend a few nights in northern Italy then meet up with my friend in Bologna. We'll visit Pisa, Rome, Florence, Venice and Verona, then head north through Austria and Germany back to Amsterdam, where we fly home together on December 4. Good times!