​It was a year ago today that we were in London near the beginning of our 20-day adventure that would take us by train to some of Europe’s most iconic sites. About the time of this post we were finishing up our walking tour with our guide and finding our way to the West End to see a production of “School of Rock, The Musical.” Kids loved it and the show made for a nice end to the London portion of our trip. By mid-morning the next day we were traveling by Eurostar to Paris. 
 
Our new season of adventures gets underway ten days from today with a five-day trip to the North Carolina High Country. We will pack in an amazing number and variety of activities in this short experience. In July we’ll be in New England for 12 days. And for sure, just like last year’s Europe and Virginia Highlands trips, no day is ever the same.
 
We hope you’ll follow our travels here on Facebook as we get underway.
 
And if you’re curious about 2020, we’re heading out to Wyoming & Montana for ten days in July. Sign-ups have started and you can read more here: http://www.mindstretchadventures.com/2020-wyoming--montana.html
 

​Switzerland – Turning Boys Into Storytellers
 
In just about nine months we’ll be trekking around Europe – our sixth trip across the Atlantic.
 
You can check out info right here: http://www.mindstretchadventures.com/europe-by-eurail-2018.html
 
So this little report is just to relate how one day can be so memorable…even in a trip of many days.
 
This is about an adventure we had one day during our 2015 trip and it was so grand we’re repeating this set of activities this coming June. While based in Bern, Switzerland a couple of years ago we took a day trip to the alpine village of Grindelwald, Switzerland. We reached this village in the Alps via a special scenic train. During our Europe trips prior to 2015 just getting to the village was our goal and it was absolutely perfect right there. Lots of shops, cafes, and incredible scenery and then that scenic train ride back to Bern.
 
But we expanded that day during our 2015 and added something entirely new and the boys and leaders this coming summer will get their opportunity to do the same. From Grindelwald we took a gondola several stations up the mountain where the views and the weather changed. It was gorgeous and it was cold. We had lunch up there in the elements and this was just the start of our day. From the station at “First” we started our descent back to the village. So if the gondola ride up wasn’t fun enough, it gets better on the way down. Boys took a zip-line down the first leg of the journey. From there they had a short hike to the next station, and from there they took scooters the rest of the way. Boys had the option of skipping an activity if they weren’t comfortable with the “high adventure” part of this day, but of course most were 100% on board.
 
It was an all-day day trip from Bern and we loved it. And, I can’t wait to be back. In fact, three boys will be comig back on the 2018 version for their second Europe experience. There “could” still be a spot or two if you know something who needs some amazing storytelling adventures in his life.
 
And that’s how boys become storytellers on a MindStretch Travel Adventures trip.
 

With the 2016 trips full (both have been for months), we decided to go ahead and put together thoughts for our next two seasons. Many parents appreciate the opportunity to know our dates well in advance so that they can make plans for their sons' participation in a MTA experience.

Right now we only have trips, dates, and basic info ready for you to check out. We've chosen to return to some of our favorite destinations including the Virginia Mountains and the Colorado Rockies in 2017 and Europe and the North Carolina Mountains in 2018. Full details for the 2017 trips will be ready in just a few months. We already have over two dozen boys express "very" early interest.

Check out the info by clicking here.

In just over 60 days we'll be in Europe for the first of three trips this summer. Check out this video of the day we'll spend in and around Grindelwald, Switzerland. It involves a narrow-gauge train ride up to this alpine village, a gondola ride even higher up, a zipline trip down part way and an additional bike ride...plus hiking around a lake. Can't wait!

Check out the link below to get a taste of what's in store.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdFX6ncDMx8

The MTA traveler above wistfully watches the passing scenery during our last trip to Europe in 2013. We were traveling this day from Bern, Switzerland to Barcelona, Spain. I was really excited because it was my first trip to Spain, and probably the first for all the boys on this particular trip. But I had been to Europe three previous times and Spain had never been one of our destinations.

We had a wonderful time in Barcelona including taking a bus tour of the city and swimming in the sea (for most of the boys), and it was also about this time in the trip when I was thinking...maybe it's time to "re-think!" This 2013 trip, like the previous three, had always traveled with no itinerary and no reservations except for the first two and last two nights leaving all the other cities, countries, hotels, activities basically up to chance. Oh, past experiences taught us to travel smart but it could sometimes be a bit unsettling to find out that we couldn't get to the place the boys had voted to go to. But if getting to some of those places did work out (and it usually did), we then had to find a place to sleep. That always worked out as well. However, these adventures could be stressful just because of the unknown. I remember leaving Barcelona with no real plan. We got on a train headed to some small town in France which we were told was very nice. It wasn't what we had planned but we could get there and were told we would enjoy it. I remember getting out of the train station without a clue what was there. It wasn't exactly in the guide books. We went back into the station and after about ninety minutes of talking with a train ticket agent and with that agent spending a lot of time on the phone helping us out...we were soon back on a train headed to Paris - a destination we had been told we couldn't get reservations for just a few days earlier.

A few few hours later, on a Friday afternoon we arrived in Paris on the week of the last stage of the Tour de France which would end in Paris on Sunday. We had no place to sleep. I could go into detail, but will just say a couple of hours later we had found a two-star hotel that amazingly Ray & I remembered staying in during the very first Europe trip in 1981. 

And it was also then that I decided the next trip to Europe would be different. We would plan an itinerary, select and reserve hotels, and make the train reservations in advance....and that's exactly what I've been doing for the past several months. Slowly the trip is taking shape to be, by far, our best European experience ever. As one of my co-leaders said, "Mark, think of all the extra time we'll have to do things instead of standing in line trying to make train reservations, finding hotels, etc." And he's so right. Without hesitation I'm sure this will add the equivalent of two days of activities to our 2015 adventure. And it has been a fun experience. So far I've sent out and received hundreds of emails, made international phone calls, sent money transfers by wire, etc. And it's all coming together. 

No need to bore you with the details here, but hotels are booked, some activity reservations are made, and other activities will be assembled into "discussion points" for the boys to consider this June. Subscribe to this blog and you'll have a chance to follow our adventures this summer as we visit some incredible places like Brussels & Bruges, Belgium; Strasbourg, France; Bern and Grindelwald, Switzerland; Venice, Italy; Vienna & Innsbruck, Austria; and Munich, Germany. I am totally pumped for this 2015 Europe by Eurail adventure. 

And that is just the beginning of our summer experiences. This coming summer will be our most ambitious calendar ever with two nearby domestic trips filling out the summer. 

Fodor's Travel has recently published their list of "Ten Best Train Trips to take this Fall." Over the years we've been on four of these on MTA trips. Just this past summer we enjoyed a ride up to the top of Mt. Washington via the Mt. Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire. Several years ago we enjoyed a ride on the Durango & Silverton Railway in Colorado. Just a few years ago we were on the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad in Alaska, and we're been on our own nearby Great Smoky Mountains Railroad in North Carolina. In fact, we'll be on that trip this coming summer. (Also this summer we'll be traveling across Europe by train.)

Click to read about all ten rail trails just in case you're in need of some fall adventure.

Our New England group this past summer on top of Mt. Washington after our ride up on "The Cog." 
It was a blast…and pretty cold up there!

2014 trips are full, though there's still lots to be done to get everything ready. But why wait until those trips are back to hear about the next set of trips? We're excited to announce our programs for NEXT summer and already boys are signing up.

Our BIG trip in 2015 will be an 18-Day adventure in Europe traveling by train. This will be our fifth trip to Europe and next year's program will be the best ever - and for several reasons. We'll be going in June which should cut down on a lot of the other travelers we usually encounter and we'll be following a planned itinerary that's sure to offer great kids activities along with some must-see attractions. Travel between cities and countries is by first-class train using Eurail passes.

Boys will be able to offer itinerary suggestions but so far our itinerary offers a great variety of world-class cities and sites.

We'll fly into Brussels, Belgium and some of the cities we'll be visiting include Bruges, Belgium; Strasbourg, France; Bern, Switzerland; Venice, Italy; Vienna, Salzburg, and Innsbruck, Austria; and Munich, Germany. 

We'll most likely travel with 14-16 boys. At the moment 13 are already on the roster!

Click to read about the 2015 Europe trip.

Click to check out the Europe itinerary.

Our domestic trip next summer will be a week in the North Carolina mountains basing out of Cherokee and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. 

This great week offers seven days of outdoor (and indoor) activities that boys will love. Hiking, rafting, geocaching, swimming, horseback riding, train riding, exploring, and more. We'll see the outdoor drama, Unto These Hills, that has entertained millions of visitors over the years.

The North Carolina Mountains trip will take place in July 2015.

Click to read about the North Carolina Mountains trip.

I hope you'll be interested in joining us for one of our trips in 2015. Get in touch if you have any questions. 

We've been back just a day shy of a week and this time last week we would have been exploring Munich, Germany and deciding where we would have dinner. Food was important on this trip.

Assuming you've read the daily blogs (or read some of them), there's not much more I need to add to the trip notes. I will say that the trip was fun, was indeed an adventure, and the boys were absolutely great. And that last statement is especially gratifying to say with such an "old" group of teenagers. They were respectful, kind, and behaved. Many of them have been with me three, four, five, or even six summers and I will miss them all.

So instead of reflecting on the trip, I will close with some truisms I/we discovered on this, my fourth trip, to Europe:

Things we’ve discovered:

• Europeans speak multiple languages…not two or three but often four, however we’ve found that in France they don’t often speak English – at least not to us.
• Every place has a different kind of flushing mechanism.
• It cost money to use the toilet in most public places – 50 euro cents usually.
• To use the public restroom, you often go into a room with an attendant (usually a lady who takes your money and makes sure you clean up) and you need to be very careful which direction you turn once inside the facility.
• Hotels aren’t often air conditioned even when you think they should be. Even three star hotels might not have air conditioning.
• It’s hard to find public WCs anywhere that’s convenient.
• The price of soft drinks in a restaurant is absolutely outrageous. We paid as much as 6 euros (about $7.80) for a single approximately 12 oz. soda. That’s not happening again!
• A hotel might say they have wi-fi but that doesn’t mean it works or it works as fast as one would hope.
• Buildings in Europe can be very old, hundreds and hundreds of years old.
• They can come up with a museum for anything. We found a French Fry Museum in Bruges and a Sex Museum in Amsterdam, and no, we didn’t go into either one.
• Soft drinks are incredibly expensive even if they aren’t 6 euros.
• Even if you tell a group of kids something three times, someone will not have heard what you just said.
  
• A lot of people in Europe smoke.
• There’s a lot of graffiti in Europe.
• Since the 2009 trips, wi-fi has become free in hotels but now they charge for breakfast. It would have been better off for me had things stayed the same.
• It's all great!
  

Heading home tomorrow. In spite of our early challenges, we've survived another great European adventure.

Today we started with a visit to the Deutsches Museum, an incredible science and technology museum. Followed this with a tasty lunch at a neighborhood Italian restaurant. Our afternoon hours were spent at the BMW World exhibition hall and museum. Kids loved that too.

Our final trip dinner was held at a local biergarten and we all enjoyed some great German food to end this trip.

Fun times, but we're ready to get home. See everyone tomorrow. Thanks for making this happen.

See photos from the Europe trip.