Raison d'Etre for the trip

When my dad died in October 1973, my mother, who was 64 years old, started taking trips with her middle school age grandchildren. My oldest daughter Deb, she took to Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti in October 1974. (She had to get over her antipathy to flying to go on this trip. Anything else would take too long.)

Mom taking a photo of Deb in the floppy hat with Australian youth members

The next year (1975), we all (my sister and her children [Durshy, George and Susy] and my children [Deb, Barb, Beth and Rob] and I) went to Williamsburg at Thanksgiving.

Williamsburg

But it made my mother so sad to be home in October when my dad died that she said she would never be home in October again. The following year (1975) she took my second daughter Barb to Europe. She flew over and came back on the QEII.

Mother and Barb

My brother-in-law would not let his children be out of school in October (even though it was just middle school - all my children's teachers said they could go). So my mother sent my sister and her oldest child Elizabeth to Germany in the summer of 1976. And she paid for my nephew George to go to Germany with his band on a subsequent summer. She took my third daughter Beth to China and Japan in 1979 ,

Mother and Beth

and then my youngest niece Susy went with her to Italy in September 1985 and my son Rob went with her to Kenya in October of the same year. She even took a bus trip around the Iberian peninsula with me in 1992 when she was 83.

Mother and me in Spain

She had taken her oldest great grandson Mike to Philadelphia in the summer of 1992 when he was 12, but the heat was too much for her. In between times she traveled with friends.

So when she died, I decided to take the money she left me and take my grandchildren on trips. I had 10 grandchildren at that point but two of them (Mike and MB) were respectively 29 and 27 years old. I concentrated on the ones that were still in middle school.

C and me

I took C to Ireland in 2007,

D and me at the Barcelona aquarium

I took D to the Mediterranean in 2008.

The next grandchild by age had lived in England with his parents and traveled all over Europe for 3 years, so a trip wouldn't have been such a big deal for him. He wanted to go to Japan which I wasn't really anxious to do, so he went with to Japan with his class.

Bree and me in Tallinn

The next one I took was Bree and we did the Baltic on a cruise in 2009

Luau

I took Justin to Hawaii in 2010. Bob and I went to Alaska in 2011

M and me

Then it was M's turn and we went to Australia.

A and me

A did a two week cruise in the Caribbean in 2013.

J and me

And then I had to wait until 2018 for J the youngest one to be age 12. We went to Tanzania but the only photo I have of us together was taken on the way near Amsterdam.

Periodically I would suggest trips that I could take Mike and/or MB on, but Deb was always against it.

60th anniversary Back row - son Rob, daughter-in-law, daughter Deb, granddaughters A and J, daughter Beth, son-in-law: seated son-in-law, daughter Barb, me and Bob

In May 2019, our children went with us on a cruise to Bermuda to celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary. And afterward, I took A on a river cruise from Lyon to deNimes. In November 2019, I had a hip replacement. Then came the pandemic.

I didn't plan any trips for 2020. The first thing I planned was a Chesapeake Bay cruise with American Cruise Lines (ACL)in May 2021.

Clouds over the Chesapeake

I felt really guilty about not having taken any of Deb's children on a trip. Mike was a chef in Vermont and his wife Lesley was an administrator in the Vermont state park system. There was a cruise that ACL did that I really wanted to do - so I wrote to them

I know you and Mike usually go away for about a month in February. I was trying to figure out how I could do a trip with the two of you, but the trip I would really like to do wouldn't be your usual trip where you rent a place for a month. I was thinking of doing the Snake and Columbia rivers on a boat - a small ship with about 100 passengers. But the earliest they do the trip is 2 March and it is only 8 days. I have also always wanted to visit the Oregon rain forest (Olympic NP), but apparently the only way to do this is to rent a car and drive. February is apt to be rainy and foggy and somewhat colder than the places you usually vacation, so it may not appeal to you.

Lesley wrote back and said that the only time they could really get away was in early November and asked if there was another place and time that would work. I replied

There are 3 European cruises on Ama waterways which I am interested in

Starting 1 Nov for 8 days - Luxembourg to Nuremberg. We were supposed to go to Luxenborg in 1950 but the boat was late so we didn't get there.

Starting 3 Nov for 13 days Prague to Budapest - never been either place

Starting 5 Nov for 11 days Portugal - Lisbon and the Douro River. I loved Lisbon in 1964 and would like to go back. This one would potentially have the warmest weather of the three

Mike picked the Prague to Budapest trip as his first choice because he thought it would be nice to go someplace I had never been. He said it looked 'rad'. So I booked that cruise in April 2021.