Who We Are

Yep, that's us. You're probably wondering how we ended up in these situations...

We are Mike and Jen from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, (home of Jimmy the Groundhog, not to be confused with that imposter from PA). Jen has been fangirling over of Rick Steves' Europe on PBS for more than 20 years. So much so, she convinced Mike that his retirement celebration in 2021 should be a Rick Steves' Best of Europe in 21 Days Tour. Truth be told, he did not need much persuading. Alas, like so many other hopeful folks, our travel dreams were postponed by the global public health emergency.
In 2022, we took a slightly smaller leap and booked Rick Steves' Best of Rome in 7 Days and had an absolute blast. We raved about Rome to our long-time friends Gordy and Dawn, and waxed poetic about saving up to take the 21-Day Tour next. Later that same evening, they sent us a text stating that if we were serious to count them in! And so, we began to obsessively plan our grand adventure for Spring 2024.

This trip was nothing short of spectacular! Our tour guide, Matthias and our bus driver, Big John, made a great team, educating and shepherding our group of merry travelers from one adventure to the next. It is still hard to fathom how much we were able to experience. While the itineraries were often ambitious, our days were seldom rushed, and we had a balance of group and independent time. The local guides were engaging, knowledgeable, and passionate ambassadors for their subject matter. We really appreciated that the big decisions were already arranged (hotels/transportation/major attractions) which allowed us to focus our planning energy on free time activities. It was the ultimate sampler… enough of each city to become comfortable and yet not so much that there wouldn’t be plenty more to explore should we return someday.
Our goal with this (our first ever) website is to illustrate the day-by-day flow of highlights, and share some lessons we learned along the way. We hope you enjoy riding along with us in this scrapbook and it inspires you to plan an epic adventure! We did our best to distill 21+ days of wonder-filled memories and wow moments including the number of steps and miles walked each day. We also tried to keep a GPS log. The app didn't work as well as we had hoped, but it gives a rough idea of the ground we covered. All of our photos were taken with Samsung Galaxy S22 cell phones.