The Anticipation Meter is going crazy with well, anticipation.
Why so you may ask, (and with good reason because I have been remiss in informing you of your next Adventure and it’s only 25 days away!)
We are here in New Jersey. We arrived a few weeks ago in order to get a jump on an unusually frantic Doctor’s Visit Season. As much as we like the health system down in Texas, there are a few folks that we prefer up here in the Northeast. And we did not want to start a process down South, only to uproot it and start all over again in New Jersey, hence the relatively earlier arrival in the Garden State.
I am deliberately filling you in on all of these trivial personal health schedules because I know that you are just dying to know where your next Excursion Exploration will be taking you and I am drawing all of this out in order to artificially build up that Anticipation Level even higher, only halting when the ear-splitting crescendo is finally achieved. Like now.
I need you all to run and get your swimmies and your passports because we’re all going on a Rhine River Cruise!
The Backstory.
Last October we were innocently sitting in the motorhome trying to decide whether to play Five Crowns or Mexican Train Dominoes when the phone rang. It was Rick and Pat (Paula’s brother and H.S.O. (Highly Significant Other). You may remember them from the trip two Octobers ago, when Pat surprised Rick for his 75th birthday and brought him West to Durango where we met up with them. Anyway, the conversation went something like this:
Pat: “Hi! You want to go on a River Cruise with us?”
Don and Paula: (in unison because we were on speakerphone) “Sure!”
‘Click’
Silence.
The End.
Actually that conversation was a tad longer than that but only to get details because it did not take long for us to make up our minds about accompanying them on their trip. We’ve always talked about a River Cruise and aside from acquiring a few brochures and getting those tempting “On Sale” mailings from Viking every other day, we never took the next step.
So, to ‘cut to the chase’ as they say, here is the Cliff Notes version of our Itinerary. It will be filled in with an overabundance of details and trivial ‘notes du jour’ as needed when the voyage, sailing, rafting, or drifting commences. You will be relieved to know that there will be no great need for any treatise of any sort on Plate Tectonics as where we are going in Europe is relatively stable in that department.
Our Adventure starts in Newark (and as we all now know that word Adventure when coupled with Newark can bring a host of issues) We are hoping for a relatively calm start to this whole thing.
Off to Switzerland for a three day ‘pre-trip’ in Lake Luzerne before joining up with our Viking Longship, the Hlin, in Basel, on the Rhine. The Rhine is the primary boundary between Germany and France so most of our Ports will be in these countries.
We disembark in Amsterdam eight days later, leave Pat and Rick, and just because we’re within a stone’s throw of London, we’re going to go there for four days before flying back home. When I looked at the Itinerary and saw where we ended, I said to Paula, “We’re really close to London, you’ve never been there, so let’s pop in for bit and I’ll show you around.” I’ve been to London five times and can actually give a good tour of the city and Windsor. I’ve never been on the NYC subway, but I know my way around on the London Underground like it was the back a me ‘and! (famous last words!)
We arrive back in Newark (sigh) on July 10.
More details to come, such as ship’s info, what to pack, where to meet us, getting your seat assignments, etc.
It should be a blast and far different from our usual “ocean” type cruising!
See you at the airport!
One reply on “Attack of the Viking”
Hey! If you have time when you are in NJ, maybe we can get together.