Picking Places

Since this trip is mostly for our children we thought we would let them each pick a place where they would like to visit.  Unlike Beth and my previous trip, where we barely stayed in any one place more than a day or two, this time we wanted to pick some central locations to stay for a chunk of time - with the possibility of day trips, but always the same place to come "home" to at the end of the day.  Beth wanted to avoid hotels and instead book us into apartments that could be rented for blocks of time - this would mean we could settle into a place for a few days, and make our own meals rather than rely on restaurant meals all the time.

Once again the determining factor was that each child got to pick one place, but the other two had to agree to it.  In the end Joshua picked London, Anna picked Paris and Thomas picked Prague - all great locations with lots to see.  So we will be spending 5 or 6 days in each city during this trip.  An addition to the itinerary came about when I discovered a week long course I could take at Oxford.  Every summer Wycliffe Hall, one of the Oxford colleges, offers a summer conference for clergy.  This year the conference is called "Heroes of Oxford, City of Saints and Scholars" - I liked the look of the program and decided to use some of my clergy continuing education funds to allow me to take in this conference.

So that is essentially our itinerary this trip - we start in London, then go to Oxford, then on to Paris and conclude in Prague.  We intentionally started in London to avoid the congestion around the Olympics when will begin the end of July.  There are a few other locations we will get to on day trips, for example Juno Beach in France, and Erfurt in Germany - but primarily it will be L.O.P.P.

The picture below is from Paris when Beth and I were there two years ago.  We barely had 24 hours in the City of Lights, so it will be nice to have more time there this time... and this time Anna can visit the Eiffel Tower herself, rather than us bring home a bunch of souvenirs from that famous landmark.