Finally Getting Back “Out and About”
We had several trips in the last year of so all planned and ready to go: Scotland, again, another cruise, a conference further away, a land trip to Iceland, a trip to NYC to see our son, daughter-in-law and their kids.
My mom had been living with us for the last 15 years. In the early days, she could stay by herself. Later, when we had a dog, a friend would walk the dog and check in with mom. Then the dog died so the friend was just checking in with mom. Then, my mom needed more and more help so I started canceling stuff and there hasn’t been any travel since a cruise out of Amsterdam in 2024.
Ever-hopeful, I bought tickets again for the Edinburgh Tattoo in August 2026.
My mom turned 102 in October and died in November 2025. There’s a password-protected post about that here.
Fortunately, our son, daughter-in-law and their kids were able to come for a Thanksgiving brunch the weekend before she died.
We were able to go see them for Christmas in NYC – and I managed to break my thumb on the way back.
But, I digress – the thumb is healing nicely and we now have 3 trips coming up with discussions about another cruise and/or a trip to China.
So, we’re actually going to the Tattoo again; the AGO Convention; a cruise from Miami to London via Portugal, Spain and France; and a land trip to Slovakia and Hungary.
Temporary plans:
BTW: If you need to know that pw it’s nana.
Dare I believe it?
Immediately after our cruise to the Baltics in 2019, we set up a cruise to the Norwegian Fjords on Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas for August 16, 2020. Along about March of 2020 everything started being canceled due to COVID-19, including our cruise.
Royal Caribbean did a thing called Lift and Shift, so we could chose another cruise for 2021 and we decided on Royal Caribbean Radiance of the Seas Alaska Southbound from Seward with Cruisetour in September 2021. We had been to Alaska before but the Cruisetour was particularly appealing.
Experience the authentic interior of Alaska in supreme comfort, with luxury transportation. Enjoy travelling on the Wilderness Express®, a luxurious, glass-domed train cars, through the interior of Alaska. Royal Caribbean also employs a fleet of deluxe motor coaches to travel the interior byways of Alaska.
Then, it looked like September 2021 was a no-go because Canada didn’t want cruise ships sailing past their country, let alone doing Cruisetours through it. <sigh>
Our Edinburgh Tattoo for August 2021 was cancelled, of course. I had expected that but bought tickets “just in case”. I was surprised when they let me exchange those for 2022. I had assumed it would be a donation to the cause.
I started looking at other places we could possibly go. I thought of doing yet another Bermuda cruise but they, like so many others, had a quarantine in place. I couldn’t see finding – and paying for – 7 nights quarantined in a hotel room in Bermuda before the cruise.
When Royal Caribbean started posting cruises in the United States again, I started looking around to see what could fit in our schedule and chose Alaska again, this time from Seattle (remember, Canada doesn’t want us!) I’ve been to Seattle a few times and Tom has been but we’ve never been together. I had also always wanted to see Sitka, so this looked like a good-ish compromise. Not the Norwegian Fjords but we all have to compromise.
When it looked like this trip was a “go”, I got the hotel lined up. After the cruise was confirmed (for now!), I started looking for cheap reasonable flights, preferably nonstop. After a frustrating time on a few websites, I finally remembered that Royal Caribbean had a flight component called Air2Sea. I had some flights to choose from, and found one that actually arrived home on the same date we disembark. 11:57 pm, but still – same day! These flights were also over $400 cheaper than my searches on other websites.
