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Upcoming Travel Calendar October 2010 - The "1956 San Mateo High School Mini-Reunion Group" is planning another event, this time to the wineries of the San Luis Obispo area. (The Group is really only Sandy and two girl friends from school days.) January 2011 - A visit to the Westin time-share in Rancho Mirage is planned, being a convenient base from which to visit son Rick in Palm Springs. March 2011 - Sandy and Mike, along with friends Lee and Shirley, will embark on a 33-day segment of Holland America's 2011 Round-the-World cruise. It's quite a trip -- includes 21 places listed in my "1000 Places To See Before You Die" world guidebook. We'll board the Amsterdam in Hong Kong, and make stops in Vietnam and Singapore before heading on to India and the Middle East. In India, we'll leave the ship for two nights, traveling inland to visit the Taj Mahal, rejoining the ship in Mumbai (Bombay). We'll have a port call at Dubai, at the ancient city of Petra in Jordan, and at the Egyptian temples at Luxor. The trip includes a transit of the Suez Canal to take us into the Mediterranean. We'll visit Kusadasi, Turkey (Ephesus ruins), and wind up the trip in Athens. This will be the longest cruise we have ever taken. June 2011 - Nothing set just yet, but a lot of thinking is going on about a possible trip to Disneyworld in Florida, with Great Grand-daughter Kerrilynn as the guest of honor. |
BALTIC CRUISE July 2010:
Mike and Sandy joined 14 other couples from their church for a 10-day cruise in the Baltics, with a pre-cruise stay in Copenhagen and a post- cruise day in London.
See pictures and highlights here.
KAUAI TIME-SHARE April 2010:
Mike and Sandy, along with Mike's daughter Ginger and her husband Blake, spent a week at the Westin Princeville time-share resort on the island of Kauai.
See some Hawaii pictures here.
CANCUN TIME-SHARE Feb 2010:
Mike and Sandy traded their time-share week in Maui this year for a trip to a brand new Westin resort in Cancun, Mexico. They were joined by long-time friends Buzz and Doreen from Bakersfield.
See a few pictures here.
CARIBBEAN CRUISE, PLUS
FLORIDA-ALABAMA ROAD TRIP Jan 2010:
Every 3 years or so, Mike and Sandy attend a financial planning seminar whose speakers include editors of investment newsletters Sandy regularly reads. Since these seminars happen to take place on a cruise ship, Mike and Sandy headed for Miami to board the Crystal Serenity for a week's trip around the Caribbean. We stopped at 3 ports, but the unusually cold weather made them somewhere between not too inviting and really bad.
When the ship returned to Miami, Mike and Sandy rented a car, and headed off for a few weeks of visits and gulf coast sightseeing. Visits included former Californians who have relocated, and some of Mike's relatives (including a 90 year old aunt). Mike also visited the cemetery where his Mother and Father are buried. The sightseeing part of the trip was also rather tempered by the poor weather, but Mike and Sandy managed to visit several interesting places along Florida's panhandle and west coast.
You can see a few pictures of the cruise, the visits, and the sights here.
OREGON - WASHINGTON ROAD TRIP 2009: Mike and Sandy took off again in the trusty old Honda Pilot SUV, and headed north to visit some old (well, long time) friends now living in Eastern Washington State. Both going and coming, they managed to work in lots of sightseeing -- some of which was natural (Oregon coast, Olympic Peninsula) while other days focused on the man-made (Grand Coulee Dam, Boeing 747 factory at Everett, Washington). They even met up with a nephew of Sandy's that she hadn't seen in about 30 years!
You can see some trip pictures here.
MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE 2009: Mike and Sandy spent nearly three weeks in late June and early July in the Mediterranean on the ms Noordam, one of Holland America's newer (3 years old) ships. This was the longest cruise they have ever taken. The ship carries about 2000 passengers, so is big, but not enormous, like the 4000 passenger Royal Caribbean ship we docked next to in Athens. The trip was actually two 10-day cruises, taken "back-to-back," and visited 16 ports in Italy, France, Spain, Tunisia, Greece, and Turkey. We enjoyed lots of historical sightseeing (including the old Roman towns of Ephesus and Pompei, the site of the first Olympic Games in Greece, the Phoenecian town of Carthage (Hanibal and his elephants came from there), and Dubrovnik, a medieval walled city now located in modern day Croatia. There were lots of opportunities for shopping (including a real Turkish Bazaar and lots of rug factories) and lots of great food! Sandy and Mike don't usually like to travel in the summer, due to weather and big crowds, but this bargain was too good to pass up!
As an added attraction, the second half of the cruise included some "celebrity" guest speakers on the ship for a series of seminars - Dick Morris, Cal Thomas, John Bolton, etc.
You can see a few of the cruise pictures here.
SOUTH-EAST ASIA 2009: Mike and Sandy, along with friends Joan and Gary from their old neighborhood in Walnut Creek, toured Vietnam from north to south for several weeks at the beginning of the year, and then visited Angkor Wat and other ruins in Cambodia. They stopped a few days in Bangkok on the way home to visit some friends who live there, and rest up for the long flight home. (At least Mike still has a few United Airlines miles left in his account, so they were able to upgrade to Business Class.)
There are some selected pictures from Vietnam and Cambodia here.
LAS VEGAS 2008:
Lee and Shirley, friends from just down the road from Mike and Sandy's old lake house at Lake Wildwood, came over to Hawaii a few years ago to visit Mike and Sandy's Westin time share on the beach in Maui. They didn't succumb to the sales pitch there, but they did end up buying a brand new Marriott time share just a block off the strip in Las Vegas. So this year they invited Mike and Sandy down to help inaugurate it.
It was a nice week, with time for the big air show at nearby Nellis AFB, plus seeing four shows (Blue Man Group, "O," Bette Midler, and a Frank Sinatra / Rat Pack impersonation group, along with LOTS of good food (the best of many quite good places probably being the Mesa Grill at Caesars Palace). See some great pictures from Las Vegas here.
ALBUQUERQUE ROAD TRIP 2008: Mike and his friend Dick headed for the annual hot-air balloon festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Going to New Mexico (via Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado) and on the way back home (via Arizona), they also took in quite a few air museums and Air Force Base exhibits.
See more great pictures of the balloons here.
EAST COAST ROAD TRIP 2008: Mike and Sandy had a good time on their spring East Coast road trip, covering three weeks (maybe a little too long!) and lots of miles. They started the trip flying into Boston, and spent lots of time on Cape Cod, in New York City, in Washington, D.C., and in Williamsburg, Virginia.
CRUISING THE DANUBE RIVER 2008: Mike and Sandy's "Home Away From Home" was the MS River Concerto, a 360 foot long mini-cruise ship, carrying 140 passengers. (This was Mike and Sandy's first "river boat" adventure, and it turned out VERY well.) They visited 5 countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary), and found something surprising in each. Traveling with Mike and Sandy were their friends Marv and Joni from Danville, and Buzz and Doreen from Bakersfield.
OMAHA AND THE MID-WEST 2008: Mike and Sandy enjoyed a couple of weeks in May traveling around the mid-West on a six-state 1900 mile adventure that unexpectedly included dodging tornados, learning about the siren signals, where to go in the motel if the alarm sounds, etc. The trip was initially planned to attend the annual shareholder's meeting at Berkshire Hathaway, the company Warren Buffet runs in Omaha, but we decided to include some sightseeing around the mid-West while we were in the area. And then Sandy remembered she had some distant relatives in the area, an old neighbor wanted pictures of the little town in Illinois where she grew up, etc., so our plans grew and grew, and off we went !
AIR MUSEUMS. Mike and three friends toured air museums on a trip down to Southern California recently. First stop was the old Castle AFB near Merced, where about 50 retired planes are parked in a park-like setting. Next they headed on down to Palmdale to visit an airpark next door to the famed Air Force Plant 42 (home of many famous projects, including all of the Space Shuttles, the B-2, U-2, F-22, F-35, F-117 Stealth, Global Hawk and Global Predator, the SR-71, etc.), and then down to March AFB near Riverside, now run by the Air National Guard. (This old AFB also has about 50 planes outside, plus a quite nice indoor museum area.) Next two stops were at the Chino airport, where two quite fancy air museums are located -- these are quite different from the volunteer-staffed museums associated with the Air Force Bases, with lots of spit and polish and most of their planes in flying order, since a big part of their operation is renting out planes to Hollywood movie studios and the like. (One of these is where we saw a completely restored Japanese Zero fighter plane and a B-25 Mitchell bomber, both of course of WWII vintage, take off and go for a photography flight for a Japanese television network.) A visit to the NHRA's national museum in Pomona broke up the routine, along with dinner at the Proud Bird Aviation Restaurant and Museum near LAX. Our last stop was the Commemorative Air Force (formerly called the Confederate Air Force) base in Camarillo, where we saw, among a variety of WWII era planes, the last flying Martin 404 airliner in the world.
Know about the Copper Canyon? It's longer and deeper than the Grand Canyon, but can only be reached by train. With friends Buzz and Doreen, Mike and Sandy headed down into Mexico late in 2007 for a bit of excitement and nostalgia, on the retored 1950's era Pullman cars.
Sandy and Mike enjoyed a two-week trip to Alaska in June 2007, with one week on a cruise ship and one week on land. Lots of glaciers, bears, moose, and souvenir shops!
See some of our pictures from Alaska here.
With friends Lee and Shirley, Sandy and Mike spent nearly 3 weeks in Japan and China in May 2007. The BIG draw was the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, but there were lots and lots of other interesting sights as well. See a few of our pictures from the trip here.
Mike and Sandy try to do one of the "Cruise to Health and Wealth" trips every 3 years or so, and the 2007 trip was out of LA and down along the Mexican Riviera. The speakers on days-at-sea was the main draw, but Mike also enjoyed his first zip-line adventure in the mountains above Puerto Vallarta.
See a few of our pictures from the trip (including the zip-line) here.