Bill and Cathy McArthur Summer/Fall 2004: 10

   Labor Day, 4th of July, and Memorial Day are good times to evacuate Shore points, leaving them to the hordes of tourists. We were lucky enough to be invited on a 11 day adventure to Switzerland, Austria, and Germany with Katie and Tom and two of their "Hokie" friends, Matt and Paul, which included the Labor Day weekend in its time span. Katie and Tom did a great job planning the trip and Tom prepared an outstanding itinerary for us. A full report of the trip appears in our Random Thoughts, so only an overview appear here. We visited Murren, Switzerland, Salzburg and Vienna in Austria, and Munich, Germany. We traveled by automobile, plane, train, tram, gondola, bike, and on foot. The weather was beautiful except for the last full day in Munich, but that day we had set aside for the science museum, so the rainy weather was actually in our favor. Bill finally got to drive on the Autobahn and top 100 mph (with others passing). We drove to Katie and Tom's home in Doylestown and then, with them, to Princeton Junction to hop to Newark Airport on a NJ Transit train. We took off for Zurich at the same time as the Republican Convention was hearing from the President and Hurricane Frances was taking aim on Florida. We met with Matt and Paul in Zurich and headed out in two rental cars. After many adventures, we traveled in similar fashion from Zurich back to Katie and Tom's home. We traveled for 23 hours on the day of our return. The day after returning, we picked up our RV in Vineland and arrived back in Cape May Beach around noon.

        Bill and Cathy