When you move 2000 miles across the country (as we did in 2014), how do you maintain a friendship with those left behind?? Jan and Diane have been our close buddies for years --- most especially, we’ve enjoyed countless bike rides and dances together. Our solution has utilized Viking River Cruises, firstly in October 2014* with a shared cruise down the Danube and, now two years later, with the exploits described herein. Since moving, Patty and I have also crossed the country to visit in State College and Jan and Diane have come west to Prescott. All this bodes well for a continuing friendship.
This year’s Viking cruise down the Rhine from Basel to Amsterdam would have been enough of an adventure. However, once across the Atlantic, we reasoned, why not add a week in Switzerland? So, that’s what we did. With Airbnb we found and rented a delightful apartment on the shores of Lake Geneva in Montreux --- easily able to accommodate two couples in fine style --- we were tickled to find it.
At the end of the cruise, having never been to Amsterdam, Jan and Diane understandably wanted to spend a weekend there. Patty and I opted to fly to Italy, the scene of many of our favorite memories. Happily, all of us returned safely --- though separately --- to the USA.
The photos contained herein practically speak for themselves. Some navigational quirks in this website may not be nearly so obvious. The following may help:
NOTES ON NAVIGATING THIS DOCUMENT
ON A COMPUTER: This document creates links to Google Photos Albums. That means, firstly, a modern browser, similar to Chrome, is needed to view them as intended. Secondly, each Google Photos album is designed to open in a new browser tab. To close an album, it is necessary to close its browser tab. The browser back button will not function for that purpose!
ON AN APPLE TABLET: Press “Back to Safari” to close an album.
There are several advantages to Google Photos Albums: they are easy to set-up, changes can be made quickly and each photo can be clicked to view an enlargement. In fact, all photos can be viewed in the “enlarged mode” (with black background). Doing so, however, means only a short caption is viewable for each photo rather than a more complete narrative. On older browsers, this mode may be the only one available, initiated from the slideshow option (click on 3 dots aligned vertically).
Full Screen (or Presentation) Mode in Chrome is recommended. Tabs reappear automatically when the mouse reaches for them.
"404 THAT'S AN ERROR" MESSAGE --- REMEDY FOR
If you get the message above after clicking on one of the links to the Google Photos albums referenced by this document, the only solution I have found is for you to Sign Out of your own Google Photos account, then try again. This appears to be a bug in Google’s software. Should you not have a Google Photos account and get the 404 error, please contact me at jab.3dp@gmail.com.