We’ve seen some of the most famous churches in the world, but as I noted on the front page, our favorite church in the whole world is C.C.C. We’ve been to churches where they say the remains of the Magi, Mark, Peter, Michelangelo, and Galileo have been interred, but Chatham is where we live and worship a living God. It’s good to be home.
After deleting a thousand or so pictures, I still have over a thousand on my iPhone. I may bore my immediate family with them all, but I can’t put my church family through it. I will, however, show you some if you ask, and here are a few highlights of our seventeen days in Europe.
In London we saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, cruised the Thames, and ate fish and chips. The Eurostar then took us to Brussels at 180 miles an hour where we met the rest of our 18 member tour group and boarded our wonderfully uncrowded luxury coach.
In Amsterdam we ate dinner on a glass topped boat while cruising the canals and saw the home of Anne Franke. The next day we visited the amazing Cologne Cathedral that took over 600 years to build and cruised the Rhine past umpteen castles. We then traveled through the Austrian Alps to Salzburg where Mozart was born, and in Vienna had dinner and a classical concert at the Opera House.
In Venice we rode through the inner canals in a gondola while being serenaded and watched Venetian glass blowing. In Rome we tossed coins in the Trevi fountain, toured the Colosseum where martyrs died, and spent twenty minutes in awe at the Sistine Chapel. In Florence we saw where both Michelangelo and Leonardo Di Vinci lived, and then had dinner at the villa in the Tuscan hills where Machiavelli was held in exile.
We cruised through the lake to Lucerne Switzerland where we ate cheese fondue, and went to the top of Mount Pilatus. In Paris we saw the Eiffel Tower, cruised the Seine, and I ate snails.
The history of all the wars and rumors of wars that formed Europe made us realize how blessed we are to be living where we do. And like I said, we’re glad to be home.
God Bless, Rick
Chatham Christian Church 