HOLMAN TRAVELS

In 2025, we begin our European vacation in Ireland, visiting Cork and then completing two weeks of hiking on the West Coast and then the St. Patrick’s Way in Northern Ireland. After a visit to Belfast and Atrim Coast, we will ferry to England.

In England we will meet and travel with Camino friends Emma and Simon Pickles. We plan to visit Snowdonia Park in Wales, and complete a portion of the Pembrokeshire National Trail to St. Davids, the cathedral home of the patron saint of Wales. In Snowdonia, our hope is to hike the highest mountain in Wales, Mount Snowdon. We’ll say goodbye to friends and head to Salisbury to see the cathedral where the Magna Carta was signed and Stonehenge.

Next we head across the channel to see Normandy. We’ll visit the Mont Saint-Michel Abbey and Bayeux, seeing lands fought over for centuries as well as the WWII beaches.

We will head to the Netherlands for a brief visit to the Nijverdal Memory Museum, created by locals to teach school children about the people behind each of the 8000 crosses in the Netherlands American cemetery at Margraten. Next we will meet with Rina and Fred Hodiamont who adopted Roy Moore’s grave and keep memories of Jan’s uncle alive.

We will next see the cathedral at Aachen, Germany, home to Charlemagne, and site of the coronations of numerous kings.

After leaving Aachen, we will travel to Paris where we will base ourselves for almost two weeks. We plan to visit sites within a short radius of Paris, particularly to visit some of the world’s greatest cathedrals.

Leaving Paris, we travel to Italy, first to Milan where Jan lived and worked in 1973. We will have a couple of days in Assisi which was a favorite spot the first time we took our girls to Italy, and then on to Rome for the Jubilee year and to revisit some sites from our 2023 Via Francigena walk.

On Halloween, we will travel to Civitavecchia where we board our cruise ship, Celebrity Ascent, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.