Changing the Venue

In September 2021, I did a cruise to the Galapagos with my son, and in February 2022, I did a cruise from San Pedro (the port for LA) to Hawaii. Sequal to the Hawaii cruise

In March of 2022, my grandson Mike started to be worried about the effect Russia's invasion of the Ukraine would have on travel in Poland and Hungary. They were so nervous about it that we was eventually decided not to risk that itinerary.

The other glitch was in my health. On May 10th, I was out of breath just peeing on the toilet. So I told Bob that i needed to go to the ER. I felt better after the EMTs gave me oxygen. They did a CT scan and said that I had blood clots on both sides of my lungs They flew me up to D.C. and took 20 blood clots out of my lungs and put me on a blood thinner. But I resumed physical therapy, and I was told I could continue traveling, although I would have to keep taking the blood thinner and wear compression stockings.

So in May we changed from the Danube to the Rhine. That itinerary on a new AMA ship the AMALucia would be

Day 1 ARRIVE IN AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Arrive in Amsterdam and check into your hotel.

Mint Tower - 1950 - Amsterdam

Day 2 AMSTERDAM
Day 3 AMSTERDAM – EMBARKATION
Day 4 AMSTERDAM
Day 5 COLOGNE, GERMANY - I was in Cologne in 1950 and in 1964 and we also did a short Rhine cruise in 1950 and I had photos from 1950 to compare

Rubble for blocks surrounding the cathedral

Day 6 RHINE GORGE - RÜDESHEIM

Rhine boat

Day 7 LUDWIGSHAFEN
Day 8 STRASBOURG, FRANCE
I've never been here
Day 9 BREISACH, GERMANY
Day 10 BASEL, SWITZERLAND – DISEMBARKATION – LUCERNE
Day 11 LUCERNE
Day 12 LUCERNE – ZURICH
Day 13 ZURICH
Day 14 DEPART ZURICH

I had not been to Lucerne and I don't remember whether we were in Zurich in 1950.

Mike and Lesley decided to do both the pre and post excursion sections. Then we started working on flights.

In July, Delta flew a whole planeload of luggage that was left at Heathrow when passengers changed planes there. Heathrow also started to restrict the number of tickets that could be sold on planes landing there. It was stated that the three airports which had the highest number of problems were Heathrow, Gatwick and Schiphol. There are flights from Baltimore (my closest airport) to Heathrow which are very convenient for me, but I really hate transitioning in Heathrow.

2007- EWR to Heathrow - takeoff delayed 4 hours because of summer storms and we missed connection to Shamrock. On the return trip, Heathrow to EWR luggage half our luggage was lost and was not returned for several weeks

2015- This was BWI to Heathrow which was fine on the way over as London was our destination. On the return, we had a trip from Manchester to Heathrow and we had trouble getting to the plane in Heathrow because there were no people to push my wheelchair.

2016 - BWI to Heathrow and transferred to Amsterdam - we had we had plenty of time but again we did not get a wheelchair and almost missed the plane. On the way back from Amsterdam they gate checked the scooter and they broke it. My scooter was not returned to me until 3 days later with the control head broken off. They had to have tried to disassemble it because the screws that held it together were still there.

2019 - BWI to Heathrow - we made our own way to the lounge but we had a long wait for the plane and there were no seats in the lounge. Transferred to Air France. One the way home, I couldn't get a wheelchair for the flight home and I almost missed the plane.

We knew we would have to fly to Schiphol, but we thought there would be less chance of a problem if it was a direct flight from the USA. The only direct flights I found from the USA to Schiphol were from Dulles (IAD in Virginia south of DC) or Boston. My husband Bob said that he would divorce me if he had to drive me to Dulles again, and since Lesley and Michael live in Vermont, Boston was obviously more convenient for them. All I had to do was figure out how to get myself there.

There is apparently only one flight a day to Boston from BWI. it was a codeshare with Delta.

This was a problem for me because my sister had worked very hard to get me to agree to go with her to her granddaughter's wedding in Kentucky. I was to buy the plane tickets and she would do the hotels. But after my blood clot problem, she was too nervous to go with me and told me that she wouldn't go with me unless I brought my husband or some other responsible adult with me. And Bob didn't want to go. So I had to cancel the plane tickets. Southwest refunded my money right away. Delta would only give me a credit which I couldn't use. My plane tickets were being bought by my travel agent and she couldn't use credits. Since I didn't want to lose the $1K each that I spent for first class tickets, I had to persuade them that I couldn't fly anymore, so I couldn't use the credits. They eventually refunded the cost of my ticket.

In July I decided to pay in full for the airline tickets just in case the fares increased. Because Mike is a big guy and I want to have my feet up, I booked first class tickets. Mike and Lesley did a low carb diet to lose some weight.

Our flights
Date Airline Flight Departure Airport Departs Arrives Arrival Airport Service
Oct 31 ENDEAVOR AIR DBA DELTA CO 5283 11:00am (BWI) 12:30pm (BOS) First
Oct 31 KLM Royal Dutch 0618 Boston, MA (BOS) 10:10pm 10:50am (next day) Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS) Business

Nov 14 Delta 9549 Zurich, Switzerland (ZRH) 6:55am 8:45am Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS) Business
Nov 14 Delta 0259 Amsterdam, Netherlands (AMS) 11:15am 1:30pm Boston, MA (BOS) Business
Nov 15 REPUBLIC AIRWAYS DELTA CO 5605 1:45 BOS 3-:45 BWI First

Lesley booked a hotel in Boston on Oct 30-31-Nov 1, and again when we got back because my flight to Boston landed 15 minutes before the flight to Baltimore took off. The hotel had a shuttle to the airport and they could leave their car there during the trip.

I wrote to Lesley

Day 2 they are going to give us a tour of the city.

The thing I really want to see in Amsterdam is the red light district. When I went first as a 12 year old it wasn't suitable and every time since I've been with a 12 year old except once with Bob and he was too tired from the plane trip to do any touring.

Barb had some kind a beer tour there. Something like the Heineken experience. I think she also went to the Stedelijk museum and/or the Moco Museum (which is modern art) because M was interested in that.

With Bree I went to the Van Gogh museum. I went to the Rijkmuseum when I was 12, but don't remember much about it. I have not been to the Anne Frank House and don't want to go. There are a lot of little museums in Amsterdam. There's a sex museum and a Bag and Purse museum.

Other than the red light district in Amsterdam, I don't really have anything else that I really want to do. Jenna and I had a very nice walking tour of Amsterdam and maybe the tour on Day 2 will be like that.

As far as any of the other tours go - I may not be able to do them in some ports - and I am perfectly happy staying on the boat or just wandering around locally. When I went with Amelia, she went off and did a lot of the tours and I just stayed on the boat. Or once I hired a taxi to take me to places I wanted to see because I couldn't do or didn't want to do any of the tours that the boat had.

I have been to Zaanse Schans with Jenna - very briefly at the end of a day of touring where we went to Volendam, I didn't go into any of the windmills and I don't remember that they are particularly accessible. It is just the last couple of paragraphs of this blog. https://greatgrandmartanzani.travellerspoint.com/20/

I have been to Cologne twice - once in 1950

Me on the steps in 1950 - Cologne

and once in 1964. But 1964 was at the end of a plane trip and I have lost my photos (or my mother borrowed them and I haven't found them among the thousands of slides) and I would like to take the tour and visit the cathedral and the town hall particularly.
https://greatgrandmarineurop.travellerspoint.com/5/
It is probably not at all accessible so I might need help. I thought Mike would like the beer tour

Rhine Gorge - in 1950 we went on a tour of the Rhine from Cologne and I have my dad's photos of the trip. I am going to get prints of his photos of the trip and of Cologne so I can show them to people and compare.

I might like the gondola ride if I could get to it.

Ludwigshafen - I have been to Heidelberg but don't remember anything about it. My dad has photos.

Heidleberg from castle

What I do this day will depend on getting more information about the various tours. Sometimes I can do things on the scooter that people don't think I can do, but maybe I will just stay on the ship and let the two of you do something like Speyer.

Strasbourg - If the tour is a bus tour, I can do that and probably also the walking tour after it with the scooter.

Breisach - I'd like to go back to the Black Forest, but it isn't something that I will be majorly disappointed if I can't do it.

picking blueberries in the Black Forest

I would like for you and Mike to take photos of places that you went especially if I don't go. That's what Amelia did. And I would like to have copies of the photos. Do you have a camera or would you like to borrow mine? (I lent Jenna a Canon T3 for Africa). Cell phones are possible, but if you have a lot of photos on a cell phone they are all jumbled up together and it is almost impossible to share them. Polly took some photos for me in San Pedro and it was a Major hassle to find them because she had so many other photos on her phone. The same with photos that Kathy took in the Galapagos. She just left all the photos that she had taken on her camera and didn't download them so she had photos from a whole bunch of other trips on there.

I can't emphasize enough that you should not stay back or not do something that you would like to do on my account. I will say if I want help to do something. You do not have to worry that I will be unhappy - if I decide that the tour would be too much for me, I won't be regretful - I will be happy to have you go. I can amuse myself on the boat.

In Sept, Delta changed my flight to Boston from taking off at 1: 30 to taking off at 2:30. Not a problem. I told them I am checking the scooter and want a wheelchair. I don't know if the guy I talked to really understood, but at least I called and he said it was OK. I also checked about the scooter with KLM

Then later they changed the flight back to Baltimore from leaving at 1:45 to leaving at 1:30

We bought Apple tags. We got our flu shots and covid boosters Lesley came down to Maryland for a wedding and picked up my walker in its box. We registered with AMA

So we were all set. Except that there was a drought and some of the rivers were too low for the boats.

In July, I got prints of my dad's slides of Amsterdam, Cologne and the Rhine printed.

Lesley said that it would be a different type of trip for her. Usually she has to research all the hotels and air fares and options. On this trip, AMA arranges everything and my agent did the air.

We were discussing what we would do in various locations. Mike wanted to go to MoCo which has street artists including a Banksy exhibit and he likes Banksy. Lesley wanted to go to Anne Frank, and luckly she did the research - Because of the pandemic, you can no longer line up to go to Anne Frank. You have to order tickets a month in advance. So she did that and also got tickets for MoCo.

I found the stash of Euros that I had from a previous trip. Lesley ordered some and also some Swiss francs.

We were keeping an eye on the river levels and they seemed to be getting better. We discussed our packing plans. In September, we added the AMA ap on our phones. Then I went to the Vacations to Go website (where I had booked the cruise) and our cruise was not on it. Had it been canceled?

But no, it was still going. I registered for excursions. And then it was October.

In mid October we got a notice that the time of the KLM flight to AMS had changed. It was now an hour later.