78 Days to go!

Another big day, we made the FINAL payment on the transatlantic cruise!  We wish we were sailing right now!  It is nice that we ended up with a deluxe balcony cabin.  This is our floor plan, our 220 sq.ft. of space for 14 days!  We were pretty excited to get this for such a good price.  Apparently with the poor economy and the cruise not filling up too fast these better options came up for us.  It is nice to have the extra room for a longer cruise like this.  If we choose to just rest in our room it is more spacious.  I get a little nervous when I think of all the last minute things that need to be done but we will make our lists and check things off one at a time! In a few days we will make the final payment for the Rick Steves portion of the tour and then our little travel money account will be getting pretty skinny!  Right now the only pending reservations are for a hotel room in NYC on the way home.  We will fly into JFK and leave from LaGuardia the next morning.  This seemed like the best plan so we have one night to acclimate a tiny bit to our drastic time change and insure we will make our connections.  I am sure we will be eager to get home by then.   

91 days until departure!

As of today we have a reservation for our five nights in Provence after spending time with our cousins in Perpignan.  We decided on two hotels suggested in the Rick Steves guide book for Provence.  After leaving the cousins we will travel by train to Avignon and stay for three nights at the Hôtel Boquier within the walls of the city and walking distance from the rail station. We certainly cannot do everything we wish for in just three days, but we will make our list of priorities for this location.  Our room, the Lavender room on the second floor, will be our home for three nights.  On the last day there we will rent a car and venture to Arles for the last two nights in Provence.  This hotel there is another choice from the guide book, which we simply could not resist!  It is a bit more expensive (79€ compared to 62€ per night) but sounds fabulous!  Partial quote from the book: "The Hôtel le Calendal is a seductive place located between the Arena and Classical Theater...comfy lounges and a lovely palm-shaded courtyard... Pool, spa with Jacuzzi and a Turkish bath... they even have the Rick Steves Provence video on DVD in the lobby."  We will have the smallest double room with no view, but sounds like the ambiance is more than enough to please us especially since they offer low cost delicious meals and we are steps from the Arena in the heart of the city!  Thanks to our shrinking world and the Internet we were able to confirm all reservations with little effort.  We will have a car three days to explore the countryside, visit Nimes, try some local wine tasting in the vineyards, and of course the much anticipated visit to Pont du Gard (the oldest Roman bridge in the world). So now the next step is some price comparisons and get our little car lined up.  A small French car keeping with the culture would be fun! 

103 days and counting!

We have purchased our rail pass from Rick Steves Travel and resolved an issue with our flight from Gatwick to Amsterdam.  Our flight was canceled by the airlines and rebooked at a bad time.  Now we will fly out of Heathrow later in the day, but still make our 16:00 rendezvous in Haarlem with the group.  Happily there was no extra charge for this change.  The Euro seems to be holding around US$1.00:E$1.40, this is encouraging, since our pocketbook feels the crunch of the recent holiday season...but thus far we are managing to pay as we go so the entire trip will be covered before departure but the money we have saved for this is quickly dwindling!