Neither Lisa nor I had ever flown that far before.
We had traveled.
We had taken vacations.
But Europe felt different.
Europe felt impossibly far away.
It was one of those places that existed in movies, documentaries, and history books.
Not somewhere people like us actually went.
Yet somehow there we were.
Passports in hand.
Standing in an airport.
Preparing to cross an ocean.
We were traveling with my sister Elizabeth and her husband Dean, my sister Diane and her boyfriend Mark, and of course Lisa and me.
At the time, none of us knew it, but this trip would become the beginning of what we later called our family vacation club.
By the time we stepped off the plane in Amsterdam, we were exhausted.
The flights were long.
The airports were crowded.
We had been awake for what felt like forever.
Yet none of that mattered.
We were in Europe.
Actually in Europe.
Not looking at pictures.
Not watching television.
Standing there.
Thousands of miles from home.
For the first time in my life, I realized the world was bigger than I had ever imagined.
Not bigger on a map.
Bigger in possibility.
Amsterdam was unlike any city I had ever seen.
Flowers seemed to be everywhere.
The canals wound through the city like roads made of water.
The streets were lined with red brick.
And everyone rode bicycles.
Not a few people.
Everyone.
The locals warned us repeatedly about the bike lanes.
Stay out of them.
The cyclists moved fast and had little patience for tourists wandering where they did not belong.
It was good advice.
More than once I found myself stepping aside while a bicycle flew past.
One of the places we visited was Anne Frank's house.
Like many people, I had heard about it my entire life.
What struck me most was how ordinary it seemed.
Not grand.
Not monumental.
Just a building.
A reminder that history often happens in ordinary places.
Eventually it was time to board our ship.
I thought I knew what to expect.
Lisa and I had cruised before.
We had sailed on Carnival.
This was not Carnival.
Not even close.
There were no casinos.
No giant theaters.
No nightclubs.
No flashy productions.
Instead there was a quiet elegance to everything.
In the evenings a pianist would play in one of the lounges.
The ship had a library.
There were giant interactive gaming tables where several people could gather around and play together.
We spent more time than I ever expected playing Mahjong.
The atmosphere felt more like a luxury hotel than a cruise ship.
Another thing we noticed was the age of the passengers.
Most seemed older than us.
For perhaps the first time in my life, I looked around and realized I was one of the younger people in the room.
That was a strange feeling.
What amazed me most was that the ship itself was not the attraction.
The river was.
On an ocean cruise you spend a great deal of time traveling between destinations.
On this trip, the journey itself was part of the destination.
One of the first places that truly stayed with me was Kinderdijk.
That was where the windmills were.
That was also where something happened inside me that I still cannot fully explain.
Amsterdam had amazed me.
Kinderdijk confused me.
Not because it was strange.
Because it felt familiar.
Standing there among the windmills, canals, water, and countryside, I had the overwhelming feeling that I had been there before.
Not Amsterdam.
Not the city.
Kinderdijk.
That landscape.
That place.
I knew it made no sense.
This was my first trip to Europe.
I had never stood there before.
I had never walked through that village.
I had never seen those windmills with my own eyes.
But the feeling remained.
The water.
The flat land.
The windmills.
The quiet.
The shape of the place.
Something about it felt less like discovery and more like memory.
Maybe it came from documentaries.
Maybe photographs.
Maybe books.
Or maybe it was something else entirely.
Even now, I do not know.
I only know that Kinderdijk felt like a place I had somehow already carried inside me.
As the cruise continued, the scenery began to change.
The river carried us deeper into Germany.
Every time I looked outside there was something worth seeing.
Castles sat on hills overlooking the water.
Vineyards climbed steep slopes.
Church spires rose above ancient towns.
The scenery never seemed to end.
One of the biggest surprises for me was Germany.
Growing up, most of my impressions of Germany came through the lens of World War II.
Movies.
Documentaries.
History books.
Somehow I had built an image in my mind that was not entirely fair.
I expected something gray.
Industrial.
Serious.
What I found instead was one of the most beautiful landscapes I had ever seen.
The countryside was incredibly green.
The towns were clean and welcoming.
The castles looked like something from a storybook.
It challenged assumptions I did not even realize I was carrying.
We also visited the Black Forest.
Oddly enough, I do not have many pictures from there.
But I remember it.
I remember the trees.
I remember the feeling of being there.
And I remember the clock shop.
Like many tourists before us, Lisa and I ended up buying a cuckoo clock.
The clock was shipped back to the United States.
When it arrived, it worked perfectly.
For years it hung on our wall.
Every hour it reminded us of Europe.
Unfortunately, after several moves from house to house, it was damaged somewhere along the way.
Today it no longer works.
But I still cannot look at it without remembering that trip.
One thing that never changed was that Lisa was usually more adventurous than I was.
Especially with food.
I tended to stay closer to what I knew.
Lisa was willing to try things I would never have ordered on my own.
At one point she had foie gras.
Goose liver.
That was not something I would have picked.
But Lisa loved trying things.
She loved the wine.
She loved the food.
But more than anything, I think she loved the companionship.
She loved being there with my family.
And my family loved being there with her.
That may have been one of the best parts of the entire trip.
Lisa loved my sisters.
My sisters loved Lisa.
She had become part of the family in a way that had nothing to do with obligation.
She belonged there.
At one point during the trip, I told my sisters a story about a friend of mine who had a girlfriend he would not commit to.
Eventually they broke up.
The funny part was that Lisa and I liked her more than we liked him.
When the relationship ended, we chose her over him.
I remember telling that story to Elizabeth and Diane.
They looked at me and smiled.
"Be careful, Don," one of them said.
I looked at them.
"We may choose Lisa over you."
Everyone laughed.
I do not think they actually meant it.
At least I hope not.
But the joke told me something important.
They loved Lisa.
Not because she was my wife.
Not because they had to.
Because they genuinely loved her.
And honestly, I understood why.
I loved her too.
One of my favorite memories came late at night.
Lisa usually went to bed before I did.
I would step out onto our balcony and watch as the ship entered the river locks.
The locks themselves were not new to me.
Growing up in Michigan, I had seen locks before.
What surprised me was how close everything felt.
The ship seemed almost too large for the chambers.
Standing on the balcony, it felt like I could reach out and touch the concrete walls.
I knew there was more room than it appeared.
There had to be.
But from where I stood, it looked impossibly tight.
I would watch as the gates closed behind us and the water slowly lifted the ship.
It was peaceful.
Just me, the river, and the quiet movement of the boat through the darkness.
Eventually the river carried us into Switzerland.
For years Switzerland had existed in my imagination as a postcard.
Snow-covered mountains.
Perfect villages.
Green valleys.
The kind of place that looked almost too beautiful to be real.
Now we were finally there.
And once again Europe surprised me.
The area where we stayed was not the Switzerland I had imagined.
The streets were covered in graffiti.
At first it felt rough around the edges.
But the longer I looked, the more I appreciated it.
There was creativity everywhere.
Some of the homes appeared to be built from repurposed materials and shipping containers.
The entire neighborhood had an artistic energy to it.
Beautiful in a grunge sort of way.
Once again Europe was teaching me the same lesson.
The places were never exactly what I expected.
And almost every time, they were better.
By the time the cruise ended, none of us were ready to go home.
Fortunately, we were not going home yet.
From Switzerland we boarded a train for Paris.
The train ride itself felt like part of the adventure.
We were not normally people who took trains.
Back home, if you wanted to go somewhere, you usually drove or flew.
In Europe, trains seemed like a normal part of life.
Outside the windows, beautiful countryside rolled past.
At one point the train experienced a problem and we spent a long time waiting while repairs were made.
Under normal circumstances I probably would have been frustrated.
Instead, I found it difficult to care.
I was sitting on a train crossing Europe.
Even the inconvenience felt like part of the experience.
Dean had purchased goat cheese during one of our excursions.
The cheese came from a goat farm we had visited on one of the tours.
It was delicious.
Unfortunately, we could not bring it back into the United States.
That left us with only one option.
Eat it.
So somewhere between Switzerland and Paris, we sat together sharing some of the best cheese I had ever tasted.
It was not part of the itinerary.
It was not listed in any brochure.
Yet it became one of the memories I carried home.
When we arrived in Paris, we checked into a small hotel that felt exactly how I imagined a Paris hotel should feel.
Not modern.
Not flashy.
Just Paris.
Of course we visited the Eiffel Tower.
Seeing it in person was impressive.
Yet I quickly realized that the tower itself was not what fascinated me.
It was the city around it.
The streets.
The architecture.
The people.
Paris felt alive.
We also visited Notre-Dame.
The cathedral still bore the scars of the fire.
The famous spire was gone.
Construction surrounded the building.
Yet somehow seeing it damaged made it even more memorable.
Then there was the Louvre.
It was hot.
Crowded.
Endless.
Of course everyone wanted to see the Mona Lisa.
I did too.
When I finally reached it, I was surprised.
Not by its beauty.
By its size.
After hearing about it my entire life, I expected something larger.
Something grander.
Instead it seemed almost small.
What fascinated me most was not the painting.
It was the crowd.
Hundreds of people gathered around one famous work while masterpieces covered the walls around them.
I saw the Mona Lisa.
Then I spent most of my time looking at everything else.
The Mona Lisa was the reason I walked into that room.
The rest of the artwork was the reason I stayed.
One of my favorite discoveries in Paris came from a small deli across the street from our hotel.
I ordered a sandwich expecting something familiar.
Back home, a sandwich meant mayonnaise.
Maybe mustard.
Meat.
Cheese.
All the usual things.
Instead of mayonnaise, they used butter.
At first I thought that sounded ridiculous.
Butter belonged on toast.
Not sandwiches.
Then I took a bite.
This was not the butter I knew from home.
It was rich.
Creamy.
Flavorful.
The sandwich was simple, yet somehow one of the most delicious I had ever eaten.
I returned more than once.
Another surprise came from the drinks.
As someone who enjoys beer, I expected Europe to be paradise.
Instead I discovered that much of the beer simply was not my style.
Many were darker, stronger, and more bitter than I preferred.
They reminded me of the microbreweries back home.
People can argue with me about beer if they want.
I drink Miller Lite.
I know some people do not consider that real beer.
I have always answered that the same way.
Some people would tell you iced tea is not real tea because it is watered down.
Maybe they are right.
But it quenches my thirst.
And that is how I like it.
So while I expected to spend the trip drinking beer, I found myself drinking far more wine than I ever expected.
And somewhere along the way, I started learning about it.
The regions.
The flavors.
The history.
Yet another thing I had not expected to discover.
Looking back, that trip was not really about Amsterdam.
Or Kinderdijk.
Or Germany.
Or Switzerland.
Or Paris.
It was about discovering that the world was larger than I had imagined.
Everywhere I went, reality was different from the picture I had carried in my head.
And almost every time, reality was better.
The famous attractions got me there.
The unexpected moments stayed with me.
The bike lanes.
The flowers.
The windmills.
The castles.
The cheese.
The butter sandwiches.
The paintings nobody was crowding around.
The museums were incredible.
The cities were unforgettable.
But when I think about that trip today, I do not think first about Amsterdam, Paris, or the Rhine.
I think about the people.
Lisa.
Elizabeth and Dean.
Diane and Mark.
The conversations.
The laughter.
The cheese on the train.
The wine.
The memories.
The realization that the world was bigger than I had ever imagined.
And how fortunate I was to discover it with people I loved.