Life's a Trip

Our life these days is one long -- full of new sights and sounds, places and people -- trip.  And we really do keep our bags in a semi-state of being ready for whatever comes along.

Our upcoming month-long trip has posed some new challenges to our carefree approach to travel. Half of our time will be on a cruise ship and half will be spent vagabonding. We are heading to new parts of the world - unknown fashion, unknown weather so I have been focused more on on suitcases and weather reports (http://www.weather.com/ is a favorite new site) than I normally would of late. 

HAL's Westerdam will take us to these places

I've just read that a portion of our cruise will be to an area of the world (Black Sea coast of Turkey) that seems to be known for gray skies and rain  (what WERE we thinking??!!) 

Our two carry-on sized roller bags are filled with clothes ranging from Joel's suit and a basic black dress for me which should carry us through cruise-ship 'formal' nights to our more usual travel wardrobe of  shorts and sandals. Warm weather, wet weather - got it covered.

We are on countdown to departure:  the part where packing is being done, travel documents being gathered, (checked and re-checked), yard care being arranged, home security is in place, and last minute projects being completed.  My least favorite part of travel are the days immediately before departure.

Joel continues to research possible destinations and routing's for our last two weeks (it was great calling the bank's fraud division to register our plastic and trying to tell them where we would be traveling when we don't know yet).

Greek fishing boat

Unless the Athens strikes cause some major upheaval to our travel plans we will head first to the island of Poros, about an hour's ferry ride from Piraeus, the port where we board our cruise ship.  We've booked ourselves at Manessis Hotel.

And so the adventure begins. . .