Picture of the Day - Europe 2026

 

In 2023 we had the opportunity to take all the kids to Greece with a group of whom we knew no one except the person organizing it (a teacher I knew when I lived/worked in Cookeville) and my aunt and uncle who are adventurers and were able to go with us.  

I tried to get a Picture of the Day of all of us (the one above also has Aunt Becky and Uncle Dave at either end) every day of that trip and hence started my penchant for sending a "proof of life" photo to our family most days of vacation, since this is the only trip like this we took together.

Monday July 6 - just got to Amsterdam; not even through customs yet!

Tuesday, July 7th - by the time we took this picture we had already logged 10K steps (I set my alarm to send pictures around noon our time, 6 a.m. EST)

We were in Amsterdam, in front of the Rijksmuseum (the National Museum of the Netherlands).  We didn't go through it, just out to the gardens.  We had logged all those steps walking over to it and then through a park we were told about - Vondelpark.  It was a great way to spend the morning - we were here to catch our boat for a canal tour at noon.

We were rewarded back with a picture of our son and his friend eating a full meal (complete with beer!) at 715 EST on their way to CA for the week. Living the life in their 20's :). Another daughter posted a picture that I'm assuming was out of her hotel window (she was in AZ for a conference then going on a hiking trip) with the caption "105 degrees".

When we woke up Wednesday morning we were treated with a picture from our son and his friend from CA:  

Look at that kid - always representing!

We sent this in return:   We were traveling from Amsterdam to Frankfurt by train (about a 4-hour ride).  I also sent a video out the window to give an idea of the speed.

This was our Picture of the Day to the kiddos:

Yes, it's a struggle for Tom to do these - he's a great sport though, right?

Our AZ girl sent this:

This is the team heading to Brooklyn to start a Chi Alpha chapter there.  Her caption was "the high today is 111".  We kept sending pics for the kids to wake up to (generally everyone is up and moving by 6 a.m.) totally forgetting that the two travelers were in Mountain or Pacific time.  Oops!

I took this screenshot on our train ride - we were all everywhere (and my work phone was properly left behind in Knoxville - ha!)

That evening, we got our first "proof of life" from Knoxville:

Thursday, July 9th Tom picked this to be our Picture of the Day:

We were in Rudesheim waiting to catch a cruise on the Rhine.  Our friends couldn't help but take this picture shortly after and send off to our kiddos - the tour director (whom no one knew very well yet - we had just met him the previous evening) had handed Tom this to hold up for the group while he got the boat tickets for us.  Everyone loved the idea of Tom being the leader - ha!!!

Later that day we were sent another Proof of Life from our girlie watching the doggies - this one is no longer as energetic as Radar ;)

Friday, July 10th we got our Picture of the Day with sweet Peggy.  She has led a hundred (??) of these trips, mostly with students throughout her career as a teacher.  When the tour director had us all introduce ourselves the first night, it was impressive how many people were there that said, "Peggy was my teacher".  Her daughter is the one that I knew who first got us started on these trips.

The kids met Peggy on our Greece trip - we compare her to Laura a lot - short, blond, and go-go-goers.  

When we were in the Black Forest we got a picture of the entire group:

Our tour director said generally groups don't come as big as ours - that many different people come all mixed together and there's a lot to manage. Peggy and her daughter organize most of this and then book all together with a tour company - this year and last they used Gate1.  Almost every person here had a connection to either Peggy or Eleni.

Some check-ins from the girls - Erin has Fridays off May-July as a "reward" for those 55+ hour weeks during tax season.

The National Park being spoke of:

Quite different from the Alps we would soon encounter!

Saturday, July 11th - we got on the bus and found we, along with Susan and Alan, were assigned the front seats that day!  Wouldn't you know, it ended up being our shortest bus day but it was still fun to have that front-row view in Lucerne, Switzerland.

When we got to the top of Pilatus, we had this exchange with the kiddos:

We sent an additional POTD later because the water was just so beautiful!! 

Sunday, July 12th - This was our day to get our Picture of the Day with Connie!!  

Robert's reply to this was to ask if she had found a German Prince yet - she said she was working on it!!

We woke up to this unfortunate photo Monday morning:

The hybrid battery died on the hiker's rental :(

We replied later with this picture, that we sent at 11:56 AM our time (5:56 a.m. their time) and this message, "Good morning from a Biergarten in Austria"!

Tuesday, July 14th - 

We were at the Eagle's Nest, 6000 feet up.
The scenery was absolutely breathtaking.  

Wednesday, July 15th - another mid-day at another Biergarten!!  This time we got our whole gang, including Eleni, the one who brought us all together when she took her students (and us!) to Greece three years ago :). Alan & Susan's daughter was on that trip (parents were invited to go along with their kids) and Connie was a student of Peggy's "back in the day".  Since it was a student trip that year, we fit in with our four kiddos, although they were all graduated by then.  And that's the beginning of this story :)

Thursday, July 16th

And, just like that, we have wrapped up another summer vacation overseas!  

We were packed up and ready-to-go at 6:15 Munich time here:

And then ran into these two at the airport (different gate/flight - they had gotten there an hour earlier then us) - 

It was Alan's birthday!!  The other three had made plans to head to Prague together rather than return to the states with us - two are teachers and one an independent contractor so they were making the MOST of their time :)

What a privilege and gift it has been to do these - this was our fourth trip like this.  

I made mention of our Greece trip in this post in 2023.  I started to recap Italy in 2024 and never finished. . .that surprises NO ONE.  Last year we went to Ireland, Northern Ireland, and London. At the end of this post you see us arriving in Dublin and then. . ."noon in June" pictures were taken, blog post never done.  See?  Story of my life. . .good ideas. . .but they die.

This is two posts in two days. . .who knows what tomorrow will bring??  Love being back writing - it's only happening because my body has started getting up early again for this.  Let me know you're reading - I'll come visit you on your blog too :)

Love,

Jenni