At Home - November 12, 2012

Easy travel day home, Westjet is just great, simple but nice and comfortable with very friendly staff, highly recommended airline to use. Back home and just unpacked (both the suitcases and the house), one unfortunate casualty - on the last day I purchased a couple of the Nieuw Amsterdam coffee mugs, for my collection, well in my rush to just get things packed, I didn't do such a great job and they both got damaged, sad... I may try to perform surgery with some crazy glue. In summary, a very nice get away before Jan is to go in for her operation, a great distraction. Highlights include Venice, one of our favourite cities in the world (to date); The ship and the Holland America Staff, HAL have seemed to figured it out, they certainly know the business of both travel and people relationships. Although the ship was a bit too big for us, it was beautiful and well appointed and the staff were very friendly and attended to our every need. This of course includes the food, it is amazing how the kitchen puts out so many meals for so many and to have each meal to be exceptional. Special recognition given to the Pinnacle Restaurant and the Le Cirque Experience in the Pinnacle Restaurant. As far as highlighting and singling out any one port, they were all excellent and amazing ports (it helps when the weather was always on our side) - I will say the HAL Excursion with the self drive cars in Corfu was a highlight and the donkeys of Santorini were great fun, also special mention to our special day in Catania, Italy when everything just flowed and the changed port to Cagliari, Sardinia (due to weather problems not allowing us to get into Livorno), for us a pleasant and wonderful surprise. The crossing of the Atlantic was also very special, looking out at the vast ocean and thinking of all the immigrants that crossed this same ocean not so many years ago with not really knowing what to expect when they completed their at least 15 day crossing - that is a long time between land points. Here is a sampling of my favourite pictures from each of our ports... I will be updating the blog on the first Friday of each month on our future travels plans as well as linking you to video summary of this adventure which I hoping to have completed by the first update in December.