dooleygeo's VirtualTourist Home Page

I grew up an only child who was constantly looking at maps, atlases and anything that had to do with travelling somewhere else. As a child, my parents didn't take me on too many vacations. They worked hard and money was precious. I married young and had my children at a young age. We took them on one "big" vacation every other year; 2 weeks camping out west and back, a week in Virginia Beach, DisneyWorld, etc and our other vacations were small ones.

Our first child graduated high school and I took her to St Martin for a week to celebrate. That gave me a taste of the Caribbean that I still love. Our second child graduated three years later and we took her to Aruba. What a wonderful island!

From there on, money became a little less important in our lives and we started taking "nicer" vacations, i.e., a cruise to nowhere to see if we'd like cruising (we do), a trip to England to do genealogy etc.

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France

In 2003, our church's handbell director had a brochure on a handbell concert tour in France. We leapt at the chance to go and fell in love with France. We started out in the Loire Valley and ended up in Paris. We rang our handbells in Orleans Cathedral and in Paris at the Church of the Madeleine. Unfortunately, we couldn't spend as much time in France as we wanted and are planning a return trip.

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Holland

We enjoyed touring Europe and ringing handbells that we again in 2004 went to Holland and Germany for another trip. We rang in Gouda Holland and Trier Germany. After the concert tour, we had a rental car and visited my ancestors' home area in Ruinen Holland. We had a photograph of their house but couldn't find it.

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Italy

In 2005 our handbell concert tour was in Italy. What a beautiful country! We flew into Milan and travelled to Venice for a few days before taking the train to Rome to meet up with our fellow ringers. From there we toured the Tuscany region. After the rest of the ringers left, we travelled back to Milan where we did more sightseeing. We took the train from Rome along the Mediterranean coast to Genoa and got off to look at that town. Then we hopped onto another train to go to Milan. The train trip itself was well worth the time spent travelling that way. We had magnificent weather the whole time we were in Italy.

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Switzerland and Austria

2006 bell tour was in Switzerland and Austria with the ringers flying home from Munich. Again we went early and stayed later to do our own thing. Among the side trips was a visit to Stuttgart to see another ancestral area.