Bryan Tipton

Thursday afternoon, Kim and I sat in front of her office computer, and played with an array of dates, locations, routes, and times. The result? On November 20th, we fly into Frankfurt, Germany and on December 2nd, we fly out of Munich, returning to the States. But this is just an intermediate step. Our true destinations: Prague and Vienna.

There were some flight logistics we had to work out. Namely, that Kim would be flying from Denver and I out of San Diego, and ideally we wanted to fly together. Fortunately it worked out quite well. We both connect to the same layover flight in Pittsburgh on our way to Europe. And we fly back from Europe together to connections in Philadephia, where we'll each take a separate flight to our respective homes. Thus, we're on the same plane to and from Europe.

While I've heard wonderful things about both Prague and Vienna, my desire to visit is largely art generated. These two cities have concentrated collections of my three favorite artists: Klimt, Schiele, and Mucha. It's difficult to view their artwork in breadth anywhere outside of these cities.

Currently we're trying to get some semblance of a plan together as far as length of stay in each city and potential side-trips. A few side trips discussed include Dresden and Bratislava. Mainly we're looking at casually paced days where we get to absorb and appreciate each city we're in.

I imagine I'll maintain an online journal while I'm away, but I'm not sure of its web site location. It will probably be concatenated onto my previous European travel journal.