Good life in Europe

Time has come for aonther yearly trip to Europe. This year we celebrate my parents anniversary so the trip has to be special all the way. Of course, thanks to the wonders of the internet (and Google Earth in particular), now it is so much easier to make the best choices and be sure that what you see on the photo is at least close to what you get in reality. Of course that doesnt happen much in Europe, but it definetly happens a lot in Latin America. After a few years here, once you get used to double check everything it is hard to stop.

Anyway, the main destination of the trip is definetly Venice. It is one of the most amazing cities anywhere and the experience of spending a few days there, walking around across 400 year old bridges, riding gondolas, drinking local wines with not a single car in sight feels quite extreme compared to most conventional, land-based, cities. The criteria to choose the hotel in Venice this time was basically the distance to San Marco and the view. Since you never spend much time in the hotel besides sleeping and sometimes breakfast all you need is to be close to San Marco (the heart of the city) and of course if you are used to get up early, few sights beat the view of the entrance to the Grand Canal at Dawn.

From Venice we go to Milan, basically to see the recently restored Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci. See, we also fell victimos of the Da Vinci Code fever that is taking over the planet and directs hordes of people to count triangles on the Louvre Pyramid, visit mantions outside Paris, crowd in the Westminster Abbey and travel to just recently not at all known parts of Ireland. Add to that all the people who run around Rome following the leads in the Angels and Devils Book and you might agree that Dan Brown´s impact on European tourism flows is quite impressive. Who knows where will he send us with his next book. It might be a competitive advantage to buy it first and book the hotels in advance before everything becomes overpriced and "Solomon Code" Tours start appearing all over the place. But back to the point...

So, Milan is basically the second leg of the trip because of Last Supper, the Duomo, La Scala and the world famous and extremely expensive shopping streets that on weekdays are for some reason full of really tall girls from Eastern Europe. Well, I imagine why they could be there but I wont put my speculations in print.

From Milan, the last leg of the trip takes us to Madrid, Spain. For no reason other than that it is the one major western european capital I have yet to visit. And of course the city is beautiful, the jamon serrano is delicious and places like Toledo are quite a sight. 

As usual, everything starts and ends in Amsterdam since KLM is quite good and it is one of the few airlines that fly direct to Lima. Overally, it is a 16 day trip through 3 countries and 5 cities accompanied by great weather, good food and some quite scenic hotels.