You may recall that early this year I obtained Map & Travel 2003, a route planning software program for Europe. It was not available in the US, so I purchased it in the UK, shipped it to a friend in the UK who forwarded here. With it I have planned the routes of Jan's Girls' Trip from Vienna to Barcelona and our trip around Scotland this fall. It has actually been quite an adventure using the software. It will access the Internet and give you road problems in the UK, but it does not do that for the rest of the continent. At one point it told me that a 20 mile trip around a lake in Scotland would take a little over two hours. Impossible! screamed one of my traveling companions, but an email from a friend in Scotland told me that only Mighty Mouse could make that 20 mile trip around that lake in less than two hours. It can produce nice colorful travel maps, but it is not anywhere near as sophisticated as the comparable US street map products from DeLorme. However, it is still a slick program to use. For anyone who wants to tour Europe in their own vehicle (as opposed to the train or the thumb) this is an invaluable program. Yes, you can get similar results from http://www.theaa.com or http://www.viamichelin.com but this software is easier to personalize and change the options. After you set the routes, you can verify your route against those two sites. Jan is leaving this week with turn by turn maps from Vienna to Barcelona. Then again, half the fun of one of these driving trips is getting lost which despite the GPS and maps we do intentionally.

Tom ever so lost in Carlisle, MA.