Even though we had a few hick ups in our last travels, Bill and I are eager to travel again.
We had a trip through Grand Circle Travels to Sicily and Malta scheduled for November. Bill and I thought it would be a nice place to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.
Our small ship trip from London, Normandy, Falmouth, Cork, Derry, Valentia Island, Dingle, Galway, Slieve League Cliffs, (Ireland) and Belfast was cancelled due to Covid in July. This was planned so we could celebrate Bill's 85th birthday in Ireland.
I transferred that trip to the Suez Canal Crossing: Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Red Sea. It is aboard an 89 passenger small ship for 6 days and the other 12 days are a land tour. We've been to Egypt on a Nile River Cruise before, but it's one place we don't mind revisiting. On the Nile River cruise there was a post trip to Petra, Jordan but at the time I was working and didn't have enough vacation days accumulated to do it. This trip will go to Petra, Jordan.
Bill and George kept talking about adding the pre-trip, Palestinian Discovery. A few days after returning from our cruise I added the pre-trip to our Middle East trip.
Houston....we've got a problem. When I went to add the additional 5 nights to the trip on the calendar I realized that we had less than two weeks between the trips. I know I could get the laundry done but it takes a while to get over the jet lag and recuperate from such an active trip.
I decided if we moved up the Sicily trip and spaced it out better, we'd be much happier. The only problem was in order to move it to next month, I would have to switch over to the Overseas Adventure Travel or OATS as they are called. When I first booked the Sicily trip the itinerary regarding the Mafia part of the trip sounded much better on the OATS itinerary than the Grand Circle itinerary. We debated back and forth because the Grand Circle trip had a pre-trip to Malta and Malta finally won. Bill and I both like the pre-trips because it gives you a chance to catch your breath after the long flight. We've found that we seem to mesh with the travelers on the pre-trip since there are less and that gives us a chance to know some of the travelers before the main trip begins.
Okay, it's settled now. I switched over to the OATS trip and we won't be going doing the pre-trip to Malta. The OATS trip is more rigorous and they are a smaller group with an average of 12 travelers. You explore Mount Etna in a four wheel drive vehicle with a local nature guide. It includes 2.5 miles of hiking which Bill and I are capable of doing. The problem I see is the hiking is at 6,000 feet. We'll wait and see how we do. We may do all of our volcano exploring by four wheel drive. This trip will be next month which will give us plenty of time between the two trips.
I read a blog today about knowing when its "time". We thoroughly enjoyed our 12 years of RVing, but when it became frustrating finding a RV park on the fly, it just wasn't any fun anymore. We visited all 49 of the continental states and couldn't think of any place to go. We loved the freedom the RV supplied, not making plans just going. We traveled over 200,000 miles and met some of the nicest people. Giving up the RV has now given us the opportunity to see the rest of the world. We wouldn't be able to travel like we do if we had to pay for insurance, fuel, maintenance, RV parks and admission to places. We are much more relaxed having everything planned out and no unexpected expenses.
While we enjoyed ourselves on the cruise, these trips are completely different. One thing in particular is there is absolutely no dressing up. I was worried after our trip to the Ohio River Valley, when my zipper on my luggage didn't work. I didn't want a new one as my luggage had "character". It looked like it had traveled the world. Fortunately, I was able to repair it.
Your days are very busy. There are always optional things if you don't want to participate, but no matter how tired we are, we are always glad we didn't pass anything up.
I had a couple of readers ask what travel agent we used. We don't use a travel agent. You just look on the internet at either gct.com or overseas adventure travels.com to see what interests you. There's a handbook about a trip you can print or they will mail it to you. It includes everything you need to know about what to pack, visas, type of electric plugs, weather, customs of the people, history of the area, money matters, how to prepare for your trip, itinerary, physical requirements, terrain and transportation, flight information etc. We get 6% credit toward the next trip and $700 for multiple trips in the same year. I like the fact that I know to the penny what the trip will cost without any discounts. If anyone does decide to book a trip, if you use our customer number 569832 you get an additional $100 a piece off.
Turtle Safely.........
