118 days to go! Cruises, fuel charges, balconies...

The price of the cruise has dropped and fuel charges have been dropped from most providers as well!  We can get the balcony at a senior price for less than we booked the inside cabin!  Amazing!  I am on the Meet & Mingle list with other Royal Caribbean travelers and they talked about these discounts so I put them into play with Todd at Cruise Vacation Outlet!  A balcony is a great treat and we love having it, we just could not justify the expense at first.  So, now we have an UPGRADE for LESS!   This along with the rising US$1 with respect to the Euro will increase the stretch for our budget!  Every little bit helps! 

First and Last Hotel Information Has Arrived!

It is an exciting day for us because today we received the names and locations of our FIRST and LAST hotels on the Rick Steves portion of our Europe trip.  They look pretty great, fancier than we anticipated them looking.  We will be at the Ambassador City Centre Hotel in Haarlem, right near Amsterdam for the beginning of the tour.  It is great to get this information along with complete, detailed instructions on how to get to the hotel from the airport, which is just 30 minutes away by bus!  Our last hotel is in Paris, Hotel Beaugency we will be contacting this hotel as we want to spend an extra night there after the tour is finished.  This extra night will give us a chance to do some catch up on travel journals and to savor those last moments of the tour before heading south of France to visit the cousins.  We will return to Paris at the end of our trip to spend  week in Timeshare property just out of Paris but we will also enjoy staying in the heart of the "City of Lights" too.  

European Rail Pass~135 Days Until Departure!

We haven't had a lot of time to plan things due to holiday company and caring for "Uncle" in our spare time.  However, we are are almost ready to purchase our Rail Pass.  We have planned out our days of rail travel and specific trips.  I called Rick Steves Travel yesterday and they confirmed our thinking about which pass to purchase, and that actuality that buying a pass does save us at least $200-$400.  There are a lot of "ins-and-outs" that are somewhat unknown to us, such as last minute travel discounts certain days of the week, etc.  We are glad to have someone with knowledge and experience to call for advice on this.  We will be getting a Saverpass 2nd class ticket.  There is little difference with a 1st class ticket other than seat configuration; 3 plush seats per row in 1st class,  4 skinnier seats per row in second class.  Either way we can sit side-by-side and we don't need "plush" seats!  We want to purchase the pass before the end of the year as the price go up in January.  The pass is good for six months from the date of purchase and good for 30 days after the first use, which in our case will be May 23-24, after the scheduled tour with Rick Steves Travel.  In addition, we will need to book reservations two to three months out to be sure we can be on the particular schedules we have planned for.  Thankfully Rick Steves Travel can advise me on that too.  Departure is coming up so quickly for us!!! 

ONLY 146 Days!

The family, company, and holidays will take priority over our trip planning for the next few weeks.  We will continue to gather information and order our rail pass before the end of the year.  Typically there is a 10% increase each year on January 1st.  One can purchase these up to six months in advance so we will take advantage of that small savings. 

PC2 Go must go...Acer takes it's place!

John had the little PC2 Go set up and ready.  He did some preliminary training with me and got me going.  I could access and send email, load and configure photos, and post to this travel blog from it!  These are the main things we wanted to be sure to be able to do.  I also downloaded a few programs, as did John, and we still have plenty of room left on it.  As we made a trip to Costco we saw yet another model that John preferred!  We took this home to try it out.  It is slightly more compact, weighs a smidgen less, and the keyboard and screen are slightly larger. It does not have the handle attachment so it will be more compact in our luggage.  So of course the other has been cleaned up and taken back.  We again have all the desired programs loaded and feel fairly confident about the use.  The small size takes a bit of getting used to.  However, we have used one before and in a few days one becomes more or less accustomed to the size.  I am guardedly optimist that I might be able to input photos to a web album, along with journaling, and have a photo album almost ready for printing when we arrive home from our trip!  This would be ideal, at least I would not be sitting here with seven weeks of photos to figure out!  Of course right after getting the new Acer up to speed HP sent an email about their new mini product... this is up to John!!!  He thinks we will just stick with this one for now.  We will play with it for a few days and see how it goes.          

Galveston B&B - 162 Days and Counting!

The Villa Bed and Breakfast is now booked for the one night before the cruise begins.  We will have the Provence Room.  Seems fitting since we will also visit the Provence area when in France.  Take a look if you would like.  The Provence Room.  We have been researching transportation from HOU (Houston Hobby Airport) to Galveston Island.  Unfortunately, due to the damage from Ike this is not a "valid location" to drop a rental car at his time.  That might change.  If not, we will take the Galveston Limo Service, which is really just vans or mini buses with door to door service.  That would work as well for us too at $30. each for seniors.  However, we might check into simple public transportation (a bus) as well.  Anyway, the room looks so amazing with a Jacuzzi tub for two!  Maybe we will spend our time there relaxing instead of exploring Galveston. We will be leaving home at 5am with a 6:45am flight and ultimate arrival time of 11:45 am in HOU. This should put us into Galveston around mid afternoon.  Since we sail at 5pm the next day, there really isn't a lot of time to explore, but hopefully we can see a few highlight in the area. 

Planning AND Shopping AND Counting The Days!

After a review of magazines last night I discovered some further places to explore in Provence.  Some further investigation will determine if we want to dedicate time to visit them or not.  We have just so many days and we want to be sure to plan correctly so we don't miss the most important things we want to see.  Rick Steves says PLAN but then be flexible.  We agree with this philosophy.  We have found in the past if we don't "plan ahead" we simply look at each other and can't decide what to do. 

We have both been looking at and pricing small travel laptops.  Today one came up with a bargain price from Costco with free shipping and we ordered it.  The good thing is, if it is not what we want, it can be returned to the local Costco.  Of course, we get the free support line to help with the learning curve too.

Take a look if you would like:  PC2Go

Despite the time consuming distractions of the care Uncle Bill has needed, we are getting back on track with our planning and life here at home. ONLY 169 days until we leave for EUROPE!!!

Shopping Day

Today we placed our order for books, maps, and travel guides for our Europe trip.  Many items will be included with our tour, but we need a few things for the independent travel part of our trip.  When we booked the 21 Days Best of Europe trip with Rick Steves RickSteves.com we received a 20% discount code for any one time purchase.  It was soon to expire, so today was the day!  It was tremendously helpful to have visited the Travel Store when we were in Edmonds after our Alaskan cruise.  It is helpful to see and touch items as well, when making a decision about what is needed and wanted.  So now our purchases are made and we will have all the information needed to plan our independent travel after the program with the Rick Steves tour. 

The planning process

Today I spend some time updating and making this blog look more as it should so it makes some sense to the readers.  Be patient, I am new at this.  Now that most of our big transportation is in place it is time to start planning the details of our travel.  It is important to have good plans per Rick Steves and then to of course, be flexible.  We will spend part of our time on rail travel and we need to investigate just what will be our best option.  We also want to have a car for a few days in the Provence area after leaving our cousins location.  We need to determine if a rail and car pass or just a rail pass with separate car will best suit our need.  Hopefully we will have time to sit down and plan some of this very soon.

Our Cousins

09-23 I wrote to my cousins and that part is also going into place. René will plan our program while there and he will either take us, or loan us his "little car for daily use" - THAT should be interesting! I did drive before in France, and rural was a snap, cities-not so much.  We are making preliminary plans for both Paris and part of the Provence area we will visit.   There are choices, we can't see everything!  We are also in the process of purchasing insurance for our trip, that will be 1K+, but we MUST have it.  Anything can happen.  Here is a photo from Sharon's visit to France in 2000.

Airfare Completed!

09-21 It’s a red-letter day - we have now booked ALL our flights for our Europe trip! This is very exciting for us as our plans are becoming firm and we were able to book ALL of these flights for a total of $898.75 for the TWO of us!!! This was using a couple sources of points we have saved AND enumerable web searches and phone calls! We are very excited and very pleased, even if it has been frustrating with so many dead end searches along the way. The end result is very pleasing! Now it is time to begin further planning of our independent travel after we end our time with the Rick Steves tour on 23 May in Paris. See below:

     18 April - FAT to HOU (Fresno to Houston, via Dallas on American Airlines)

     03 May - LGW to AMS (London Gatwick to Amsterdam, British Airways)

     09 June – CDG to JFK (Charles de Gaulle to Kennedy, via Dublin on Aer Lingus)

     10 June – LGA to FAT (La Guardia to Fresno, via American Airlines)

Rick Steves Europe Through The Back Door

08-23 It was really exciting to visit Rick Steves Travel Center in Edmonds, WA.  We were able to ask a lot of questions and get all sorts of advice.  We also took a class on digital photography and we are even more excited than ever for our EUROPE TRIP!   www.ricksteves.com

A week in PARIS!

08-01 Today we booked the Royal Regency very near Paris! We were very excited to be able to use timeshare points for that! We will see what we want and can, in and around Paris, rest, then fly home. I hope this gives us enough time to visit the cousins and see everything we want in the Provence area and southern France.

A mild Shock

06-22 Shocking - we realized we will have just 9 hours or so to get to Amsterdam from Southampton! I counted the days wrong. We checked cheap flights and that should not be a problem, sure would like a buffer though. Considered canceling the cruise and just flying, or do a different cruise, John says “NO WAY!”  Anyway, there are a lot of cheap flights out of London airports, but it is too soon to book, they don’t book that far in advance.

The first steps....

06-20 We had an exciting day... Finally Rick Steves put their 2009 tour schedule on the Internet.  We are BOOKED!!!!  We will start his tour May 3 in Amsterdam!!!!

We will cruise transatlantic leaving 04-19 on the Voyager of the Sea, sister ship to our Thanksgiving cruise ship the Explorer of the Sea.  Galveston, TX to Southampton, England.  We will have about 36 hours to get from there to Amsterdam.  There is a train/Ferry combo that can do that from London to Amsterdam for about $60. each... if we want to sleep our way there in a room is it about $120. each... we might do that as it is cheaper than a hotel I am sure!  YAY!!!  We are both very excited about this.