Quist World Tour

Morning at the Hostel ELF is much quieter than the nighttime. While the crowd is lively and people are in the halls late into the night, all the showers are open and the breakfast tables are mostly empty around 8 or 8:30 am. This made it easy for us to get a decent start without getting up at the crack of dawn. Today’s target: Prague Castle. Since it lies on the other side of the river, we get the distinct privilege of walking through the Old Town again. Yesterday’s golden sun was hiding behind grey clouds, and as we crossed the river, the sky started to spit a little rain. I’d actually gotten a bit of heat rash on my legs the day before, so the reprieve from the sun was okay with me. The complex was first begun in the late 800s, and much of the Castle was built in medieval times, and some of the structures display the remaining walls and foundations from that time. In addition to the castle itself, which honestly isn’t much to see inside when compared to other great castles,...

Sunday morning we gathered our belongings and took the quick subway ride back to the train station.   On the way, we stopped to take a look at one more church, St. Charles Church. Music is everywhere in Vienna, and concert opportunities abound. Outside every church there is someone selling concert tickets, so ticket sales are not unusual to see. St. Charles didn’t stop there, though. This church also offers some sort of virtual reality experience, which I’m guessing probably shows you how some things used to look, but it still seemed like something from an amusement park. On the other hand, maybe it would’ve helped, as half of the inside was unviewable due to a huge elevator added in the middle that offered access to a panoramic experience—a chance to see the painted ceiling up close. Which is nice if you are paying, but we weren’t. It’s a strange thing to have in the middle of a worship space. Sometimes cathedrals feel like such sacred spaces, and sometimes they seem like ...

If you have ever backpacked across Europe in the manner of ambitious young travelers--Lora is hitting 8 countries in 3 weeks--there are a few things you don't have as strong a need to pay for in the last third of the trip. For instance, paying a fee to climb up a tower, or enter a cathedral, or see another palace. These are all fantastic things, but after the 15th or 30th, they start to lose a little shine. So you could go to the summer palace, a place consistently rated as one of the top things to see in a Vienna. And then your middle-aged aunt, sprung free of all responsibilities, shows up and casually suggests a day trip tour to Salzburg, a town she informs you was in a movie you've seen twice, "The Sound of Music," but a movie which in olden days was apparently shown on television once a year and seems to have been a national event.  Your aunt may sound like she's making a casual suggestion, but when you look in her eyes you see a deep longing and p...

I think I'll leave Wednesday to spend a few days in Vienna and Prague. These are not words that I generally hear, much less say, in everyday life. Yet that's exactly what I did this past week. A week before, we'd heard that my niece's friend, who'd been traveling Europe with Lora for a couple of weeks, might have to go home early. Brian and I quickly decided that if Lora still wanted company for the last two legs of her trip, I was in a good place to do that.  As it turns out, the friend did go home, and I was able to get a last-minute ticket with airline miles, which sort of shocked me. So on Friday I booked a ticket to Munich for Wednesday, then reserved a seat on a train to Vienna, where she would meet me. The whole trip there was, as it always seems to be for me, a nail-biter. Two flights ended prematurely with mechanical issues, a third got me to Philadelphia just in time to board my flight to Munich, which was then delayed 3 1/2 hours, so I misse...

Ah, motherhood. For a long time it felt like my children would be young forever. And then they were suddenly almost-grownups. I always thought I would enjoy it all a lot more if I could time travel between ages—a few days of babyhood, a week of teenagers, then a couple of days of toddlers and then a week of tweens. Scattered in between should be a good number of travels back to being childless and forward to the time they are on their own. It seems like I would appreciate it all so much more if it weren’t so constant. But of course it doesn’t work that way, and I’m always in the here and now, knowing that the sweet little golden heads holding my hands are not coming back, and one of them is heading out to college next year. Knowing all that, I still manage to be annoyed that they need me so much. Still can’t get in the shower or go to the bathroom without someone calling “Mo-om?” outside my door. Why would that bother me now, when I can plainly see that it will be short-lived? B...

Driving from Michigan to Florida during early April is like driving through spring in fast forward. When we left on Friday morning, you could see a crocus here and there, and the hyacinths were just beginning to poke their heads out, checking to see if the coast was clear. The trees didn’t show any signs of waking up yet, other than a bucket hanging from a random tapped maple in town. In southern Ohio, we noticed there were some small, white flowering trees along the roadside, mixed in with larger trees that were showing signs of budding. Kentucky and Tennessee were a time-lapse; first there were the redbuds, then the hazy hues of gold, green, yellow, red and pink that look like a rainbow-colored peach fuzz. Then we hit Georgia and Florida, and the green leaves unfurled around us so that by the time we hit Bradenton, we were into full-blown June. Some of you know that my father-in-law had a ruptured brain aneurysm in late February. I couldn’t help but think of him as I watched ...

Glacier National Park is not as big as Yellowstone or Banff, but it is not lacking in any other way. It is a gem. On Thursday morning we got a good start to the day and headed to Going-to-the-Sun road. This is the road that is only open halfway through the park due to the wildfire. I can’t imagine what it was like for people who were on this winding mountain road and were suddenly evacuated earlier this summer. Some were forced to leave their vehicles on the road. It must have been chaotic and frightening. The farthest we could go was Logan Pass at the top of the road. We figured that the earlier we got there the better, since that is where lots of people would go, and the parking lot would fill up. The drive up through the valley and up the side of the mountains is breathtaking. Glaciers, waterfalls, rivers, and trees dot the mountains looming over us. When we got to Logan Pass we went to the visitor’s center to get some suggestions. We decided on a hike on Highline trail. W...