MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE 2011

The counter on my computer tells me that in 45 (May 13, 2011) days Cindy & I leave on our trip. We are going on a Mediterranian cruise. This will be our second cruise.

I have to tell you all about it. I am so excited.

We fly from El Paso, TX to Chicago & New York to Barcelona, Spain. We get there on May 14 a day early so we will get to see a bit of Barcelona. Then on Sunday, May 15 we board the Royal Caribbean Ship “Voyager of the Sea” with 2500 of our closest friends for a 6 night cruise which takes us from Barcelona (Spain) to Toulan (France), Florence (Italy), Rome, Messina(Sicily) and finally ending in Venice. At each of those stops we will be doing our best to see what we can see in the time we have. After the cruise we will spend a few extra days in Venice then taking a train across Italy to the Cinque Terra on the west coast. After a few more days there we take a train to Milan and fly home.

I am particularly excited about seeing Florence, Rome, Venice and the Cinque Terra.

Cindy & I have been to Venice before but only for 1 ½ days which was way too short. This time we will spend the night taking a gondola ride and also having a glass of wine at an outdoor café in St. Mark’s Square. I want to see the Academia Museum also. And of course we will have gelato. I believe I will get a Carnival mask as my souvenir.

In Rome we will see the Roman Forum, Coliseum and Vatican. We have never been to Rome and I fear the few hours we have there will have to do. Choices had to made about what we could see and afford so all along the way we are doing everything we can to enjoy our time there.

The Cinque Terra is a national park consisting of 5 small villages perched on the rocky coast of western Italy. Rick Steves (the travel guru seen on public television) introduced us to the Cinque Terra and ever since we have wanted to see it for ourselves. So we tacked on 3 days to spend relaxing and just enjoying the scenery.

Once we return I will tell and show you all about it.

BIG SURPRISE

It was a Friday evening around 10:30pm. Cindy & I were watching television and web surfing when the doorbell rang.

I looked at Cindy and said “who in the world is at our door at 10:30?” In all of just a second or two I thought it might be college kids collecting food for some scavenger hunt or something like that, but now that I’ve had time to think that through, that was rather stupid.

I looked through the peephole and saw a group of kids standing there but I couldn’t see faces. So what did I do in light of this uncertainty? Did I yell out “who is there?” like one of the three little pigs or did I open the door? Well, I opened the door of course.

It was then that I had one of the most surprising shocks of my life.

All this happened in mid January of this year. I had just celebrated my “60”th birthday a few days earlier. We hadn’t done anything special mainly because we are going on a big vacation in May so a big weekend get-away or something like that wasn’t going to happen. We were going to have dinner out with our good friends the next evening and both kids had sent cards and gifts and called so I was all set.

When I opened that door on that Friday evening there stood my family (our kids and their spouses) who broke out into “Happy Birthday” while I just stood there dumbfounded. Even now I am emotionally caught up in reliving the experience. Wow! I didn’t know what to say although that didn’t stop me from trying. I kept babbling something like “How is this possible?” and “Does this mean I’m not going out to dinner tomorrow night?” We hugged and laughed all the while they told me their fantastic tale.

I also learned that evening that my wife is a convincing LIAR!! She is also the most organized planner I know. She is wonderful. My family had been planning this since August. They had been emailing back and forth about how they could make this happen and when. Cindy had checked with my secretary about my schedule so I didn’t plan something else.

Matt & AJ had flown in from DC but their flight was delayed and they almost didn’t make it. Laura & BJ along with granddaughter Lily had come down from Denver. Cindy had me convinced that she was going to a recital with her good friend and then out for dessert. In reality she had met up with Laura & BJ at our church so they would have a place to wait for Matt & AJ to fly in. Then she went shopping for food since she couldn’t very well have all this extra food in the house if I was going to be surprised.

The whole plan came together and I can’t thank them enough. I am just dumbfounded by all the work that went into surprising me for my birthday.

DARLING LILY

A short time ago daughter Laura & granddaughter Lily flew down for a long weekend.  Laura found a cheap ticket which made it possible but it also meant they arrived here about midnight.

Over the course of that long weekend we watched Lily walk, play, went for a few walks, out to eat, soaked in the hottub and just had a very nice time.

Lily is changing so quickly. She can really walk now.

MY KINDLE

You know how guys are with their “toys!” Well I had been intrigued by the Kindle (ereader) that enables a person to read digitized books. I have that capability on my Palm TX but the screen is very tiny. So having a Kindle with a bigger screen sounded interesting. Then I also heard that the Kindle could connect to the internet. That really got me interested.

 A few of our friends have Kindles and so I got to look at and handle one. Cindy had expressed some interest in one so I thought she would get one and maybe I could try out hers.

When my family surprised me on my birthday they also surprised me a gift – my very own KINDLE 3G Wi-Fi.  I have been having so much fun with it. For some reason I do not totally understand I am reading a lot more now than before I got a Kindle. My good friend Ken & I (he has one also) have been sharing some books and then talking about them together. There are literally thousands of free books available on the internet. I have sent myself all our travel arrangements for our European vacation. I have our schedule plus hotel information and things we are doing while on our cruise.

I love it. I also discovered that I can access my email account so I can both receive & send messages.  Admittedly this an experimental feature at this point and is a bit cumbersome but it works.