Ready To Travel Again

As the spring rains come and gone in Windsor, it must be time to travel again. We are just about to leave on a trip that has been in the planning stages for about 15 months. Usually we pick a cruise and go but friends in California suggested that we book the cruise and see them again. Now that we are ready to go, they had to cancel due to medical reasons. In any case we are 6 days from leaving for China and then the 23 days with the Diamond Princess sailing to Alaska and then on to Vancouver. Watch this space for our travel plans.

P.S. To Cruise Adventure #8

This ends the current postings to the blog. I may try to upload a few pictures later but that will just be for my practice. No further travel posting will be forthcoming but I will notify you (if you don't mind) of when the blog will be active again. We are headed for Calgary in mid June and intend to do some alpine wildflower hicks so we may post something on that trip. Thanks to those who left comments!
Cheers
Rick and Judy

Barcelona Good Bye and Return to Windsor

It really is nice to return to a keyboard that is more than 4 inches and I can actually use without a microscope which is what it was like using the hand held that Chris had with him. If you received the first blog from Barcelona and could not decipher it, the problem was using the small screen and some of the things that the keyboard did on its own. Then it would not support spellcheck (or eye check for that matter. I did go back and correct it so if you want to see the actual posting you need to go to the web site.
Our last day was spent travelling the Gothic centre of Barcelona which is the oldest part of town where you can still see portions of the Roman defensive system which and now part of some of the buildings. The Cathedral was very impressive but in general the Spanish Churches are very different from the ones that you see all over Italy. Yesterday I mentioned the waiting for Chris and did not elaborate much on the whole area. It is a great place if you like crowded narrow streets and shops that are on a siesta in the middle part of the day. It was a national holiday weekend and there was wall to wall (or is it building to building in the narrow streets) people.
After just touring around, it was time for the mid afternoon beer in a sidewalk cafe. Only problem was that Judy had some specific ideas - not to crowded (like that was going to happen), in the sun, quiet. After walking for about 45 minutes we settled on the main street with about 8 lanes of traffic! However it was sunny and the beer was extremely cold. Brigitte went to work immediately talking to the people next to us (an oilman(?) U.S. but living in Copenhagen) and her must have overheard us talking about splitting another beer - I could not guess if Chris wanted another - but no sooner had we talked about this that 3 half liters of draft arrived courtesy of the couple! Apparently Brigitte does this all the time - talks to strangers (good for her!) and pets stray dogs but that is another story.
Dinner was near the Gaudi church where there are plenty of restaurants (bars) serving "Tapas(?) which are dishes of food on display and you just order various plates. It was a fitting end to the 3 great days we spent with Chris and Brigitte in Barcelona.
Yesterday we were up early for our 10 am flight. Chris and Brigitte we going to spend the day touring before taking the overnight train down the coast. The Delta flight back was uneventful but we they did have wine available and served both lunch, ice cream and a pizza snack on the nearly 9 hour trip. JFK was backed up and after easily clearing immigration, we were about 90 minutes late getting to Detroit.
I do have to say something about our transportation home. By the time we got to the baggage area (a long way from where the plane landed) our driver and his assistant were already loading it into the back of a beautiful black Mercedes. In fact he had 3 offers for driving jobs from other people while he was waiting for us. Now John was dressed in black and looks like a limo driver! Yvonne the assistant was flagging the luggage and spotted our bags from the name tags. All in all a wonderful pick up. Many thanks to our good friends who got us home in style where we had a chance to share a bottle of wine. But the best part of ending the trip with this limo driver and assistant is getting invited to dinner today! They are highly recommended to anyone needing a lift.

Barcelona Gothic Touring
I am having a bit of a hard time trying to use this little key board as I am typing with a pencil point. Today Chris and Brigitte were off to try and buy a ticket to Valencia for the next leg of the trip so we headed out and agreed to meet at the catheradel at 1. By the time that they arrived at 1:30 Chris had had it. The problem is that they do not have a intergrated rail system so you can't do one stop shopping. When they finally got it figured out, they realized that the credit card was back at the appartment with not enought time to take the metro back and still meet us. They were 30 minutes late and we were ready to move on and see the gothic cathedral.In any case we did meet up and toured. The biggest problem was that my camera electronics went out and I had no camera available for most of the day. Now that we are at the appartment, it is working fine. We did stop at a sidewalk cafe for a beer and Brigitte struck up a convesation with a couple who eventually sent over 3 half liters of beer! Good for her.
Now we are headed for Gaudi street and will have some dinner . After that it will be back here. We need to head to the airport tomorrow around 7 am. I will try a final posting sometime after we get settled. We are scheduled to arrive late Saturaday night. It has been a wonderful "20" days. As always cheers!

Big Red Bus and Barcelona Touring

Barcelona issue a beautiful city.We have been here for for 2 days and have been running today seeing as much as we can. Spent yesterday in Montserrat and it is an extremely interesting place. Today was the busiest day. We rode the big red bus and saw the Gaudi park, and then raced to the dancing fountain display. Went got back here around midnight. More postings later but this hand held is very hard to type on.

Marseille Day

This will be the last posting from sea as we are scheduled to get off in Barcelona tomorrow and then stay for the 3 days of touring with Chris and Brigitte. We just returned from about 6 hours of "do it on you own" sightseeing! We actually encountered tours from the ship as we moved about. We needed to shuttle bus in to the city as we are docked about 4 miles from the main part. From there we took a city bus to Notre Dame, a massive church on the high point overlooking the city. It was built on the foundation of an old fort with another church on top of it. Quite impressive. The city views were very commanding as well. Rather than walk down we opted to use our return bus ticket to get back into town so we could head in another direction. We went up the main street for about 45 minute walk and reached the gardens, also located on a hill with a memorial on it. Of course by then we were getting hungry and thirsty so we stopped in a little sidewalk cafe and had beer, wine and a light snack; then headed back down to the old port. We did get off the beaten path a bit but it was just another interesting way to arrive downtown. There was another protest going on so it took quite to navigate the crowds and catch the bus back to the ship.
So the cruise is over except for the departing. Our opinion is that although the weather has been really great; no rain on the entire cruise, we still prefer the fall crossings with the port days up front and then the sea days to relax. This way we have had 4 port days in a row! Until next time...

Touring Rome On A Sunday

Pushing 6 pm local time and we returned from the full day in Rome. Considering how far it is to get to Rome, we needed to be on the bus by shortly after 8 am and for the sleepy heads that was accomplished with few problems.
We did Rome on Your Own which means that they take you there and bring you back and everything in between is on your own. The bus guide was quite good and funny and gave n excellent into to the places that we might want to visit. Having spent time in Rome on 2 previous visits we were off to some of the lesser places. They dropped us in St Peter's Square but the pope was conducting services today and St Peter's was closed until 1-2 pm which meant long lines and little time to make the departure. we decided to go to Castel S. Angelo which is the old fortress looking building at the beginning of the street to the church. It has had many uses in the past starting in Roman times but more recently used as apartments for various popes who built on top of the old Roman structure. It is where he went in times of political problems. At any rate it was quite interesting although a bit confusing with all the ages of the structures.
After that we headed down the Tiber - walking of course - into the Trastevere district which is just south of the Vatican. We were headed for the first Catholic church built in Rome called Santa Marie in Trastevere. A very impressive church. You think that you have seen it all and then the next church produces surprises. Lunch in a little cafe behind the church (gnocchi again) with wine and beer and then a walk back to the Vatican. The lineup was still long so we strolled the streets and looked in the shops.
Last night was Country Night and we did some line dancing and a few other things including an very good singer. Now the Italian opera is coming from the Atrium just outside this room. Judy is already back in the cabin taking a shower and will probably be asleep by the time I get there. All this before we crack open our new bottle of wine. Liverno walled towns and farm house lunch tomorrow. Cheers.