Pictures, parte numero uno

I figure a picture is worth, if not a thousand, a few dozen words at least, so allow me to present a few assorted visuals from Europe! Africa will come next.

Before Europe of course, we had to pack our wordly belongings into the basement so the renter people could  move in. Guess who carried everything downstairs?

From left: Claire (14), Julia (16), and their mom Maria hosted us while we were in Paris.

Notre Dame was cool. 

La famille et Le Tour Eiffel

There were a few of these "Lock Bridges" around Paris. People would put a lock on the  bridge with their  lover's name on it, the police would do the occasional purging, and it would start over. We saw a few wannabe bridges in Bavaria, but none were nearly as successful as their Parisian counterparts.

Maxim the very cool tour guide! I think the weird face is a result of his accent.

Along The Chemin, there were sporadic crosses that people have been putting up for centuries to guide them before there was a path. Now people put prayer stones by each cross if they stop there. I don't think we every saw two crosses that were the same. They were made of wood... unless they were made of iron, steel, grass, stone, wire, or some other material. We came across some that were over 20 feet tall, and others that were only a few inches.

Fog rolling into Gschnitz in the morning. I wanted to stay and hike through it but we had to get to Salzburg.

The Alps were fantastic. What's crazy is how different they are from the Rockies and Sierras.

From Salzburg, we took a 25 mile bike "ride" up a mountain (read: hill). Took 30 times longer getting up than down.

Funny part is, Tim didn't even like it that much.