“Two minutes to spare”, Brett informed me as we settled into our seats on train from Dublin to Galway. The taxi driver had been amazing, navigating the traffic and construction to get us to the train station on time, but when we discovered our train was on the end of a very long track, we ran (faster than I thought I was capable) to catch it before the doors closed. We made it and settled in for a two-and-a-half hour ride from the east side of Ireland to the far west. Little did we know that our final destination, the Cliffs of Moher, would consume another two-and-a-half hours on a bus ride down the coast. So, on the last day of our three-week European adventure, we spent ten of our fourteen travel hours on a taxi, a train and four buses, but when I saw the Cliffs, I knew each bump in the road had led us to a place like no other.

Cliffs of Moher
And as beautiful as our last excursion turned out to be, our first was every bit as breathtaking as we traveled from Bergen to Oslo to explore the fjords of Norway

Fjord tour
Eleven days later, we traveled from Munich to Zurich by bus, Zurich to Lauterbrunnen by train and Lauterbrunnen to Murren by cable car—halfway up one big-ass mountain.

Sunrise in Switzerland
Three of the most beautiful sights on one vacation is more than one should expect, but there was so much more…