A brief note about your hosts
We’re Mark and Julie and we live in the small town of Clovis in Central California. We decided to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary with a three-week Rick Steves tour of Europe. We had fun planning the trip. We had lots of ideas about what a trip to Europe would be like. Our best surprise…getting to know the other people on our tour.
We also enjoyed keeping an online travel blog while we traveled. It was fun for us to have our family and friends follow our blog and make comments along the way. Julie used the content from our blog to produce a beautiful digital scrapbook. This website is a compilation of our best photos and journal entries from our trip. We hope you will enjoy it.
We would love to hear from you:
Here we are at the Alpenhotel in Reutte, Austria.
Mark recently retired as the Assistant Vice Chancellor of the University of California, Irvine. He continues to do consulting with colleges and universities. Julie taught history at Fresno City College, California State University, Fresno, and the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. We have three children, all living in Southern California. We love spending time in the Sierra Nevada and in Old Town Clovis…and, of course, traveling.
Small Things
We learned a lot from little things. Smiling about the hats that didn’t fit. Touching the tiny flowers in a Swiss meadow. Seeing the kindness of new friends.
Food Faves
OK…we knew we would enjoy great food on our trip. What we didn’t know was the range of new tastes we would experience. Share our yummiest surprises.
Europe By The Colors
Tour Europe by the colors. Amazing colors are everywhere. Is there a more beautiful blue than the Mediterranean off the rocky coast of the Cinque Terra? Ah…there’s much more.
Puppy Pals
We missed our dog Jax, but we met lots of puppy pals everywhere we toured. Is there a better way to meet people than admiring their pups? We don’t think so.