Titlis was the first excursion. The rotating Rotair cabin to the summit, the Ice Flyer chair out over the open glacier, the cliff walk across the highest suspension bridge in Europe. The glacier cave bored into the ice is lit blue; we did the bridge twice before the cloud came in.

The lift to the Eiffel summit floor gives you Paris flat to the horizon, the river threading through it. The Seine cruise after passed back under the tower at dusk as it began its hourly five minutes of sparkle, the whole structure lit gold and flickering over the water.

Into Amsterdam and straight onto the water. The canal cruise through the ring of seventeenth-century canals, gabled houses leaning over the boat, the captain threading bridges barely wider than the hull. Bicycles stacked five deep against every rail.

The Keukenhof day was a wall of colour. Seven million bulbs planted in great drifts and ribbons, the tulips at their April peak, the smell of hyacinth carried on the wind. We finished at Zaanse Schans among the working windmills, the wooden-shoe maker turning out a clog in five minutes.