Home Tonight

As Steven Tyler belts out in "Home Tonight", "Now is time to bid you sweet adieu!".  No post on Sunday or yesterday because bad weather forced us to sail from Colliouere directly to Monte Carlo on Sunday.   We barely ventured outside our cabin and, when we did for lunch, nearly got blown off the back of the ship.  Nothing quite like eating a near-gourmet lunch with a blanket wrapped around you in a good stiff wind!

On these types of trips, you always meet some people you really like (and some you don't).  In the former category, we met Jan and Ted Teasdale from Australia - he of the "She led with her chin" comment to which he added a few other colorful metaphors I won't soon forget (e.g., "crash hot" which means people who are pretentious).   They were absolutely charming and a ton of fun to be with, so they definitely make the Christmas card list and, perhaps a visit in Kewdale, West Australia someday.

Joining the Teasdales on the really like list were Dr. and Mrs. Schulman who you met in the "Cooling off in Colliouere" blog . . he as the post-stroke patient the underperforming travel company made walk up the steep hill only to go back down it.   Can't wait to fire up a letter to them telling them how ridiculous that was.  And, joining them was "the Brit" - Vic Duffy.   While it is true that there are different dialects in the UK, this one registered in the barely understandable category.   But he was so damn quick with a laugh and a smile, we found him absolutely charming.

Make no mistake, though, that there's no better traveling than with Mary Lee Hess and Ray Urban, so we're keeping our fingers crossed that ML gets well soon so we can start planning our next adventure.  Alas, I had no one to drink "Jim Bim" with this time.

On awakening yesterday morning (Monday) we were pulling into the fabulously wealthy Monte Carlo which you could detect the money by the yachts in the harbor. 

After a quick breakfast, we were off in a beautiful Mercedes limo to the Nice airport, about half an hour away, and boarded our long (9 hour) flight to JFK.   Did manage to get in a couple great movies (The Rum Diary, J. Edgar, and the fourteenth thousand viewing of Napoleon Dynamite - all highly recommended).  

Getting into the US at JFK proved an incredible hassle as many international flights seemed to arrive at the same time.  First we spent about 45 minutes in a 10 x 16 tunnel with hundreds of other people at a complete stop because of human traffic bottlenecking.  Another 15 minutes or so and people would've started passing out from claustrophobia, heat, or both - including me.  It took a full 90 minutes to get to where we had to recheck our luggage for the domestic flight to Columbus, only to find that this group of a billion people were being served by one scanner.   Got to laud that thinking of the TSA.

Finally on board about 7:30 p.m. and, as we were taxiing out to the runway, went right past the space shuttle slated for New York.  It sat astride the 747 which ferried it from Florida to New York and was preparing for its dismount this week (and that damn thing should be in Dayton at the Air Force museum!).  It was a beautiful sight, indeed.

Picked up by Pa Pa promptly at 9:30 and unpacked by 11 p.m.  With Italy et al being 6 hours ahead of us and me getting two weeks to warm to that schedule, was little surprise when, at 2:00 a.m EST I woke up like an alarm had gone off.   Fought my way back to sleep and finally decided to get out of bed at 4:30 a.m. this morning.  Cheryl thinks I'm crazy (is she right?) and she's still upstairs dozing as we approach 7:00 a.m.

So, in summary, here are my thoughts about the trip:

1.  Rome - fabulous, but don't have to go there again.  Would like to see other sites in Italy, though.

2.  Seabourn Cruise Line - an A+ experience overall, with C- for tour associations

3.  Transatlantic flights - aaaarrrrrgggghhhhh

4.  Home - priceless

Love you all, and thanks for following!  Until our next adventure.   JD and Cheryl