,March 2016:
As our usual travel month of April approaches quickly, Carol and I are pretty much prepared for a new journey. Having had incredible experiences visiting Barcelona Spain and wonderful Spanish coastal cities and towns; France including Paris, Versailles, the Alps, Mt St Michel, Loire region, and Normandy; the Azores, Madeira, and incredible Italy with Lake Como, the Cinque Terre, Venice, Florence, Rome and my favorites of all Sienna & the Tuscan Hill Towns, we realize that “someday” this will have to stop … but it is NOT someday today. There are more mountains to climb and many more things to see. This list will get longer, as long as we can. We are reminded that it is the journey not the destination.
To highlight the seriousness of this all, I have already started the planning for Europe 2017 which may be our most interesting and exciting yet visiting the French Riviera including Nice, Antibes, Monte Carlo, and the South of France, return to Barcelona, and ending in a tour through Switzerland & the Alps.
This upcoming trip has been in the planning stages since last June and has proved to be the most difficult to schedule. There are more moving parts and our trip is longer than any of our previous ventures with more countries to visit, more languages involved, and more currency to deal with. I know I have said this before but our first trip was 33 days and we thought that might have been a bit long. So the next year it was 41 days and that definitely was too long. So this year we have made it “just” 45 days. It is tough to resist going to another fabulous city or town when it might only be an hour or so away, so … you just have to go. Where to draw the line is the difficult part. There is just so much to see.
On April 8 we will leave HH for a two night stay with friends in Vero Beach, FL and then on the 10th we will be off to Ft Lauderdale to board Celebrities’ Silhouette for our third cruise across the Atlantic. Port stops are in Lisbon, Vigo Spain, Le Havre France and ending in Southampton, England on April 23 after 13 days at sea. We will then board a train to London where we spend six nights in a lovely neighborhood just a short walk from Kensington Palace (where I will be searching for Kate and trying to unionize her employees) and Notting Hill. We will spend our 40th anniversary on April 25th in London, likely in a pub, and the countryside at Windsor Castle summer home of the real queen, not my queen. We have setup several unique walking tours in London and many sidetrips, arranged to visit Cambridge, The Cotswolds, Warwick Castle, and Stratford on Avon.
On April 29 we will fly from London to Lisbon (like flying from HH to Boston) and will spend 6 nights visiting Lisbon, Cascais/Sintra along the shore and hillside castles, and Evora where we will stay in a centuries old convent amidst Roman ruins. Maybe I will find some long lost relatives who will invite us for pork & little necks.
On May 5 we will fly from Lisbon to Amsterdam and stay along one of its many canals for four nights. Sorry they won’t allow pictures in the red light district but I will provide some explanations of what I see. Then departing by train on May 9 for Bruges, Belgium which from every picture I see is beautiful. Three nights in Bruges then off to the city of Ghent for a few nights then to Brussels for two nights. We will rent a car there and drive the beautiful countryside for a few days constantly reminded that we are visiting the heart of where the Battle of the Bulge was fought. Much to see and much to say thank you for.
We will return to Brussels then board a train for Frankfurt Germany where we will spend three nights in the German countryside with new friends that we met on last year’s cruise. On May 21 we will fly home from Frankfurt to Boston via Iceland. In all the trip will entail 45 days, 7 countries, one cruise, three flights, ten B&B’s, 2 car rentals, countless train rides, world class cities, the countryside, and one thick binder with all the trip details. Planning and research has required hundreds of hours of work. England and Portugal have been particularly difficult to plan. For those that do not know, we each travel with a small carry on and small backpack. Most people travel for a weekend with far more than that. It can be done. Clothing is chosen by weight and less by design. Everything gets weighed and its usefulness questioned.
As you can see by reading this, our method of communicating our travels to those interested will be a bit different as Nikki has with great patience and in the spirit of how I organize things, set up this blog where we will post daily comments and pictures. She prepared a binder with detailed step by step directions of how to do all this. She also placed our 2015 trip on the site. The blog will allow you to make more comments and all will be shared with everyone. Each day you will be able to log on to the blog and see where we are and what we are doing. Feel free to share the blog with others and we would love to hear from you.and let us know what is going on back home.
As with all travel there is a always a bit of anxiety. We are lucky to be be doing things we only have dreamed about. Everyday we talk about the places we have been. We want to share some of that with you. Enjoy!
Where in the World are 