Friends, Food and Travel

By Donna B. McNicol -
Moving sure can skew your sense of time! Here it is August already, how did that happen? We have been very busy between our move (DONE), selling items we no longer need (DONE), meeting old and new friends (NEVER STOPS) and attending Spanish classes (TWO MORE WEEKS).

In addition we have been getting ready for our annual trip to the US. We will be gone 2.5 months this time due to taking a two week Southern Caribbean cruise just before our return.

Speaking of cruises - we have also booked a transatlantic cruise from Tampa to Barcelona on April 16th. Needless to say, we are quite excited. We are going with four couples that we have met here (and some adorable kids). They are still trying to book FOUR MORE cabins so if you are interested, please contact us ASAP or call Royal Caribbean directly at 1-866-562-7625 with the group number 8354649. The special pricing ends August 19th! (Note: we booked through American Airlines to get double points so we aren't part of this package. We booked a balcony, our norm.)

Here's a preview:

We are all very excited - most of us haven't been to Europe. Return plans vary by each couple but here are our tentative plans:
  1. Spend 5-7 days in Barcelona
  2. Fly to London
  3. Take the double-decker bus tour
  4. On May 10th, board the Queen Mary for a 7 day transatlantic cruise back to the US
  5. Disembark at Brooklyn, take transport to JFK and fly to BWI
  6. Rent a car and spend 10-14 days seeing family & friends (and doctors)
  7. ....? This is where it gets a little unclear. We can fly from BWI to TN and rent a car to our property, spend 7-10 days there, fly from TN back to Ecuador. Or rent a car, see family in GA & FL, fly out of Miami. Right now, this is all just a jumble of decisions to make.
Or we can stay fly back directly from Barcelona to Ecuador. Not sure...LOL!

Life is all one grand adventure! We plan to enjoy it while we can....

Needless to say, the rest of this month will be quite hectic. We have to get Yellow Fever shots for our November cruise, we're still in Spanish classes, we continue to meet up (eating out...yum!) with old and new friends, we have to travel to Guayaquil to get pages added to my passport (after Dec 2015 you can no longer do this), call our doctors in the US and schedule our appointments, call our utility companies in the US and get them turned back on, continue working with local writers as we plan a writing conference scheduled for March 2016 (I will be doing 1-3 presentations), and trying to get some writing done myself. Phew!

So don't expect too many blogs this month...and in Sept, Oct, Nov the blogging will move to our US blog: Back End of Nowhere.

Ciao for now!

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