Back from Europe - Thanks for all the Helpful Advice!

[marianne202]

Just got back last night and had a great time. All the advice given here was great and right on. I was so glad I copied our passports as all the hotels in Italy wanted to retain our passports until we checked out or for several hours while they notified the local authorities. I was able to give them our copies and ask them to copy them so we didn't have to give up possession of our actual passports.

Driving was horrific to put it nicely. It is so much worse than it was when we lived there before. They have traffic circles in Italy every 200 - 500 meters! I'm so sick of traffic circles and the careless driving. Someone damaged our rental car the 2nd day in Italy. Creased the entire driver side from the front of the passenger window to the back of the car. We saw so many prostitutes that my kids started a game called "count the hookers". I guess it is legal in Italy and France! France wasn't very friendly to us at all. We loved Germany and Italy. Switzerland and Austria were very beautiful. Not much snow on the Alps though. I guess global warming is really affecting everything.

From an educational perspective we toured many museums including a chocolate museum! Talk about heaven! We had hot chocolate that was just warm melted dark chocolate - pure chocolate, no milk! To die for! We also saw a lot of American students studying at the foreign universities. I gathered that it is a good way to get a quality education fairly inexpensively then parlay that into a good foreign job. I'm not sure I could live long term in any of these countries, as some of their customs are hard to get used to. While things have improved since we left Italy 17 years ago, it is still very different than living in the U.S. I could live in Germany or Italy, but not France.

Nothing beats the U.S. in my mind! You really learn to appreciate the American way of life! It was so nice to come home! Thanks again for all the hints as they really did help. My kids did great with their motion sickness and we all avoided travelers revenge, so all in all it was a great trip!