Oh the Places I'll Go

Me in 1970 standing outside the train at a Norwegian train station              I first visited Norway in the fall of 1970 when, like many young people of the time, my friend Cecelia and I went to Europe on a three-month post-college-graduation adventure.   We visited fourteen countries, sleeping in youth hostels, eating lots of bread and cheese, drinking wine, riding trains or hitchhiking, and marveling at the scenery, the people, and the cultures we experienced.   When asked what my favorite part of that trip was, Norway tops the list.   Cecelia and I enjoyed Oslo, but the real highlight of our time in Norway was riding the train from Oslo to Bergen and back to Oslo—a sixteen-hour roundtrip.   We spent nearly all of those hours (at least as long as daylight lasted) glued to the windows of the train, awed by the magnificent mountains, interlaced with fjords (fingers of water), and by the small villages scattered on mountainsides. ...

Six years ago, I went on safari to southern Africa—Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.  It remains a favorite among the many trips I have taken since retirement.  I thought Scott would be interested in a similar experience, but I wanted to see something different, so we booked an east African safari for this summer.   There were many similarities between the two safaris--most of the animals we saw on this trip were repeats of those I had seen on the previous safari, and both were booked through Smithsonian Journeys.  But there were also differences, most notably in the terrain and the safari vehicles used.  The wildlife parks we visited in east Africa—Kenya and Tanzania—are vast compared with those in southern Africa and required driving much greater distances to see animals.  The biggest negative of this trip was that much of our safari-vehicle driving was over bone-jarring, teeth-rattling dirt—and dusty—roads.  The discomfort was worth it, however, ...

Scott has long wanted to go on a Caribbean-island vacation, but to which island?  He found a Viking Ocean cruise to ten of them, and we decided that would be as good a way as any to do an initial reconnaissance.  We booked a December cruise.  Since his teaching schedule gives him a break then and we have no immediate family to spend the holidays with, this has been a favorite travel time of ours for several years.  We convinced our good friends Monica and Loren to spend Christmas in the Caribbean with us after having had so much fun together last year on our Rhine Christmas Markets river cruise. The old fort Our cruise began and ended in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where we had booked a walking tour of the old town and fort.   Unfortunately, Monica and Loren had flight problems and missed that first day.   To add insult to injury, Monica’s suitcase didn’t arrive.   In fact, it didn’t catch up with the ship until the last two days of our cruise.   C...