Oui. Oui. All good things must come to an end, and so it was with the Gibbs/West Expedition to Europe. Upon leaving Italy, we had only Switzerland, France, and England ahead of us for the next two weeks, and then it was time for the plane ride home.

How time flies.

At Interlaken, Switzerland, we took a gondola cable-car up to the small cliff-side village of Gimmelwald at around 4,400 feet, where we took rooms at Walter's quaint and creaky hotel overlooking open expanse. No cars here, either. The string of cliff-side towns that make up the elevated and picturesque Lauterbrunnen Valley are connected by trails and bike paths.

We spent our day in the Alps riding another gondola up to the Schilthorn Peak's observatory, revolving restaurant, trinket shop, and movie theater at 10,000 feet. The only movie they show is James Bond "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" with Telly Savalas, which was filmed there and made the place famous.

The four of us walked down the rocky cliff trail beneath the observatory to a ledge and sat down for our European lunch -- bread, wine and cheese. We spent a pleasant afternoon volunteering to photograph other tourists with their cameras as they stood on the ledge. In the process, we struck up conversations, and exchanged email addresses with a fellow from Belgium who was interested in house swapping.

That night at the hotel we hired Christian, a yodeler and accordion player, as after-dinner entertainment. I danced in the street.

On to Paris, our final tour destination. After a day of riding the Metro and visiting the Louvre, we had our last group supper. Though we all explored in separate ways and seldom spent time together except on the bus and during group dinners, we were friends. We all got along. Except for me, there were no loud, obnoxious, embarrassingly obvious tourists in our group to make the others cringe and back away. That was good.

Michelle, our advice guide, threw an Awards Party. She brought small, brass Eiffel Towers and post cards for each of us. Jane West won Ms. Resiliency, Susan got Ms. Helpful and Most Likely to Become a Tour Guide, Ron got the Most Thankful to be Alive Award, and mine will remain anonymous. If you really want to know, you'll have to ask me on the street.

Paris is one of the most beautiful and well-designed cities on earth. The Metro is cheap, goes everywhere, and the trains come every 2-3 minutes. The transit system must not be too hard up for money because most kids jumped the turnstiles and no one seemed to mind.

The city is divided by the Seine River running down the middle, so it's hard to get lost. Go where you like, then return to Seine. Also, the sky-high landmarks are visible just about everywhere -- the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame.

We stayed for five extra days after the tour disbanded. Considering we spent each day walking all day, I'd say we easily did 30 miles. Jane comped a ticket for her daughter, Beth, a teacher now in San Leandro, and she flew over to be with us.

I know I will upset many French fans when I say this: I didn't like the food. Ouch. Don't hit me. I tried. We kept buying more and more expensive meals, sampling various restaurants, but yuck-o-rama. I had Memory of Vegetable Soup, mealy chicken, chewy beef, bitter venison, sour sauce, flavorless noodles, mediocre desserts, and one good breakfast crepe. "Excuse me, I'll take the pasta special."

By the end of the week, our senses were so overloaded from a month of viewing thousands of paintings, sculptures, cultures, and famous landmarks, that we shut down. We couldn't take in any more wonderfulness. We became jaded to everything but a hard bed and CNN.

On to England! We rode the high-speed "Chunnel" train, the EuroStar, under the channel to London. Zoom! What fun. London, to us, however, was just another big city. We toured it from the top of a double-decker bus and never got off. "Honey, there's Big Ben." "Yeah, great." Look, Picadilly Circus" "Hmmm." "Oh, it's the Palace." "Nice. My feet hurt."

It was time to come home. I raced to the plane.

My final, closing, over-all, paradigm-shifted impression after this first European tour is this: Americans live large. We take up a lot of space.