At Monet’s water garden in Giverny, France.

A very full day left us trying to climb the tower of Notre Dame after closing.  Luckily, a free week long music festival was concluding right down the road, so Evan and I altered our plans.  The music stage was in a large paved area near their Hotel de Ville (city hall) and we joined other Parisians by standing in the fountains for an improved view.  The chill of the water was glorious after a hot summer day.  One of my favorite fountain memories was seeing a nearby group chill their champagne in the fountain as if it was their own personal ice bucket.

Kim and I briefly visited Lucerne Switzerland and took a crazy trip up Mount Pilatus.  To get there we walked to the train station where we took a bus to catch a gondola, which connected to another (steeper) gondola, which took us to the top of the mountain.  When it was time to descend, we hopped on the world’s steepest cogwheel train and then caught a beautiful steam engine boat back to the city via Lake Lucerne.  Quite a day!

Steps leading up the bell tower of St. Peter’s church in Munich.  I ran up the bell tower of St. Peter’s church in Munich just in time to see the Glockenspiel of New Town Hall (another tower) go off at the top of the hour.  There were probably 200, maybe 300 narrow steps up.