I went to visit my friend Lois last year. Not too long after I walked in the door I said “I want to take a repositioning cruise!” She said ok and that she also wanted to spend a month on the French Riviera. So began our plan for our Mediterranean trip.
By the time I left her house 5 days later, we had booked a cruise from Texas to Barcelona, an apartment in Barcelona for five days, an apartment in Cassis, France for a month, and our flight home three weeks after that. Over the course of the next few months we added houses and hotels on Sicily, hotels in Rome and London, and planes, trains and automobiles in between.
Eight months after the plan was born, we finally began our epic adventure. But not before spending hours planning, list making, and packing. This ten week tour has been a logistical challenge. We’ll be on a ship for seventeen days and aren’t planning to send out our laundry, we brought snacks and wine, we have coffee and tea and toiletries for 70 days, and let’s not forget the camera and two lenses, the laptop, the binoculars, and the portable speaker (because I must have my music!). And we’re flying home with no checked bags.
I did not pack well. As I thought of something I needed I would stuff it in a backpack. When that backpack was full, I’d get out another and fill it up. I think I ended up with a suitcase and four backpacks. We also have a ‘shared’ suitcase for wine and heavier toiletries like lotions; that suitcase will be left in France. As I’m writing this, I’m wondering how I’m going to get down to my goal of two suitcases and one backpack by the time we get on the train leaving Barcelona. Oh well, I’ll worry about it later. I’m on vacation.
We’ve been on the ship for four and a half days and we’ve discovered we’re not really cruise people. We have twelve days to go, five of which are at sea and all in a row. Once we leave St Thomas tomorrow afternoon we don’t see land again until we reach the Azores off the coast of Portugal.
Today we were in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was nice to walk on terra firma for a while and we enjoyed our Piña Colada at Barrachina, where the Piña Colada was invented. It was so good, much different and better than any I’ve had anywhere else. Old San Juan has beautiful, colorful Colonial buildings, many with wrought iron balconies. It was a nice place to spend an afternoon.
We’re back on the ship now, and looking forward to St Thomas USVI tomorrow. We have to take advantage of our time off the ship before that long trek across the Atlantic.