Continuation of day 14
We arrived at the Nice Airport right at 4am, just as it was opening up. We were 2 of only a handful of living souls floating around there this morning. Customer service for Air France did not open until 4:30am, so we waited right in front of the counter. Someone called us up almost immediately at 4:30am. There were 2 people working the counter this morning, and we were the only customers at that time of the day. We received the benefit of 2 helpful people. I went up with low expectations and walked away with a big smile and a new found love for an airline that I thought had just put a bid D in my A. They canceled a major international and important flight just 20 hours before takeoff. Air France put us on a flight to Amsterdam and then on to JNB later tonight. We left for Amsterdam almost immediately. We will actually be in JNB 12 hours earlier than or original schedule. This is a million times better than arriving 14 hours later than scheduled and long after a flight that may have been just for the Sellers clan. In my head I was figuring the worst is that we may have had to be driven from JNB to the game reserve. It’s a two-hour flight so not sure how long of a drive. It ended up working out better for us, as usual. But it has been a while since I panicked and freaked out about anything so it was good to get that out of my system.
Sometime during the flight I got up to pee and looked out the windows at the rear of the plane. Below was so obviously the Sahara Desert. I didn’t know it for sure, but it was as obvious as flying over snow-capped mountains, you just know what they are. I can’t believe that brown desert could possibly be so distinguishable from 35k feet. I got back to my seat and confirmed it was the Sahara with the in flight GPS map that was built into the back of the head of the person sitting in the row in front of me.  We landed in JNB safely and on time. Luckily for us there is hotel right across the street from the airport, walking distance. It is by far the closest hotel I have ever seen to an airport. Hopefully we will get air France or the travel insurance to pay for our night at the hotel. We got a great night sleep, like corpses.

Day 15 South Africa
That’s right, Africa. Woke up after a fantastic night sleep and had breakfast. Went over to the airport only to find that nobody there had ever heard of the airline we were looking for. Turns out that is because it is a private charter airline and we had to go outside of the airport to meet up with them. We figured it out quick enough. It makes perfect sense…we had to go to the bus terminal to catch an airplane flight. The worst part of missing our original flight and coming in early was that we missed a guy standing at the gate with a sign that had our name on it, like celebrities. So we staged this picture. Turns out the flight to Londolozi was a private charter service. The flight we were on was more like a shuttle. It made a total of three stops and we were the third. The airstrips were all private and some were nothing more than dirt and rock. We had to take off and land three different times in a tiny plane. It was a Cessna that held 10 passengers at most, only 6 today. Wifey was pretty stressed out about it. She hung in there like a big girl. Before we even landed the first time we saw long neckers and grey fatsos from the plane.
We were the last people off the plane. The landing strip was right at the place we are staying. The treatment, presentation, and accommodations are all so far unparalleled. Way more than anything we deserve. This is quite the place. We didn’t expect today to be much but we already went out on a 3 o’clock game drive. The fact that they took us out on a game drive the same afternoon we arrived was simply a precursor to the unbelievable commitment Londolozi has to customer happiness.   It was unreal. Maybe the best thing either of us has ever done. We were out long after sunset, in the pitch black by the light of only a splinter moon and a spotlight. We saw giraffe, baby elephants, lionesses and 5 cubs, male lion, zebras, and tons of impalas and wildebeests. The lion cubs were playing so cutely. One was eating his mama’s tail while she was sleeping and she woke up grumpy about that. In hindsight we are both so glad that our plans out of Monte Carlo changed and we ended up in JNB the day before. Getting a good night sleep was a huge benefit. Had we shown up after and overnight flight we might not have been able to enjoy our first day here nearly as much as we did. But again, we don’t typically expect much on check in day. Our guide for the entire week is Julius. So far he is great. He is a true local to this area. The food we ate so far has been delicious. Everyone treats us like we are royalty. I understand they are getting paid for it, but it is amazing. We had our first nights dinner with Julius. He gave us the lowdown on our upcoming week, and a lot of information about the local area and people. I was enthralled, so much more interested than I would have ever imagined. We heard hippos yelling while we were eating dinner and an Aussie guy showed us how to do the hippo dance. There is mosquito netting around our bed just like in the movies, but luckily it is not mosquito season in the winter.

A select few pictures here.

Day 12 Disembark and Monte Carlo
Today was quite a busy and eventful day. It started by disembarking from the Seabourn boat. Eff that place. No we go back to being regular, unknown people. It is amazing how the staff on the boat knows every ones names. Whether you meet them on day one or the very last day, the entire staff can greet you by first and or last name. We were able to walk from the boat docks to our hotel in a few minutes, quite convenient. We dropped off our luggage and set forth on a walking journey to make the Jews applaud. We went to the Prince’s Palace and watched the changing of the guards at 11:55am sharp. Apparently that is the big tourist attraction thing to do. After that we took the tour of the inside of the Prince’s Palace.
We rode another Le Petit Train around Monaco. Wifey loves these. Wifey tried to enquire about diving but the only place we found insisted that she have a medical doctors certification. Weirdest thing I’ve heard in a while. We found the one place in the country that dives and made the pilgrimage to their location. It was quite far from anywhere we planned to go. The way I see it, if they don’t advertise diving as a tourist activity, and it is that hard just to find a diving club, it is probably not the kind of place a traveler passing through would want to dive. So she isn’t diving again and was bummed about that. Later we went to the aquarium and oceanography museum. Compared to the glitz, glamour, pomp and circumstance, styling, and profiling ways of Monte Carlo, the aquarium was pretty ghetto. We were both disappointed.
We found five geocaches along the way today. There are a lot of them here. There is one series of caches that runs all along the Grand Prix circuit. When it was time to go back to the hotel we took the city bus. We missed our stop, got lost, and rode it back around to where we should have gotten off. The hotel is pretty swanky. The room is really big and the view is remarkable. It looks out right over the harbor and into the Mediterranean Sea. It also looks right down into several yachts. We can see right into the rooms and swimming pools (yes swimming pools) of these yachts docked here.  We decided to have dinner here at the hotel. I don’t know if food is actually worth what they charge for it here. Starvation and/or cannibalism seem like realistic options.

Day 13 Monte Carlo
It’s hard to believe that the view from our hotel room is yachts with servants walking around. Today was spent as a lazy day wandering around Monte Carlo. We walked from one corner to the other corner of this tiny country. Mostly we wandered around The Casino and the high dollar shopping sections. We found a few geocaches while wandering and didn’t find a few. We took a tour of The Casino before it opened. Casino’s in Monte Carlo do not open until 2pm. It cost ten euro to get inside but you can go into all the rooms, private included, and take pictures. Private rooms and pictures are a no-no during the hours of operation. One of the private rooms is awesome. It looks out over the Mediterranean Sea with cool orange colored tables. This is definitely where James Bond played. I can tell you from experience, nothing tastes more delicious for lunch than a $30 hamburger. In the ritzy shops area we saw a dog walk into a shopping mall…just swaggered right into the stores. It must be his owner’s birfday and he is buying presents.
Every car in Monte Carlo is a stunner. Mercedes followed by BMW followed by Audi followed by Ferrari followed by Porsche with an occasional Lamborghini, Bentley, Jaguar, and Smart Cars mixed in. Even the taxis are luxury automobiles.
The second half of today can only be described as complete failure. I dropped Wifey off to go out alone. I was unsuccessful at finding several geocaches. That alone made me feel like a loser. Early in the evening we found out our flight to JNB was canceled. I immediately panicked and was unsure of what to do. I did a bunch of quick, unproductive research on the internets. It seems like the best we can do is go to JNB the next day and miss a day of safari. Our connecting flight out of JNB goes directly to a landing strip at the place we are staying in South Africa. I have no idea how often that flight goes. It is a charter flight, not a regular scheduled flight. I tried to calm myself down, but I legitimately freaked out for a few minutes. I tried to make this wonderful trip for Wifey, and now it is all falling apart. And falling apart at the time she was looking forward to the most is about to start. We have no real way to contact anyone. It was late at night and we have no phones anyway. We ended up buying a calling card. I had to travel all the way to 1975 to get one, but at least we had it. We decided to try to calm down, cool off, and go out to The Casino hoping to rekindle our good times. I was surprised to find out that even though I just traveled back to 1975, The Casino would not take the travelers checks I brought to gamble with. Gambling here was the ONLY reason I bought travelers checks. We ended up leaving without having done any gambling or rekindling any fun. It was probably a good idea that we did not gamble, our luck was shit today. I guess we can’t win everything.
After getting back from The Casino we decided to simply try to get to Paris ASAP, and then hopefully on to JNB. We originally were going to take the helicopter ride from Monte Carlo to the airport in Nice, France. It seemed like a novel and fun idea. We had to cancel that plan and decided to just pack up and leave for the airport in Nice immediately. I was hoping we would have traveled by all methods of transport on this trip. After canceling the helicopter that won’t happen. We did planes, boats, cars, trains, busses, and bikes…everything but a helicopter.
About 3:30am we got a cab and headed to the airport. We were hoping to get to Paris early and then just suck up the fees and pay whatever to get to JNB in time for our charted flight. That flight felt like one we could not afford to miss. Hopefully our travel insurance would cover whatever additional costs we incurred. I completely failed as a husband, provider, and August 2012 Holiday travel guide today.

A select few pictures here.

Day 11 Ile de Porquerolles, and island that is part of France
Today was an unexpectedly excellent day, as unfortunate as it actually was. I had no hopes for this stop and assumed it would be another relaxing, do nothing, boat day. Wifey felt the same way. After breakfast we decided to take the obligatory boat ride to the island so we can at least say we set foot on the land. As soon as our tender docked Wifey started feeling not so good. She wanted to head back almost immediately. She gave me the permission to stay longer if I wanted. One thing I noticed right away was that the bike rental shops had decent looking Trek and Specialized bikes with hydraulic disc breaks and front shocks.  I checked the geocache machine and there were three on the island, at all the corners except the one we were dropped off at. With her permission I got her back to the tender, hired a bike for the day, and proceeded to commence my (unfortunate) solo geocache island adventure of the day. There was a reason the rental joints had decent bikes, the entire island is nothing but awesome biking and hiking trails! Everybody was either walking or biking with their family, picnic baskets, baguettes, towels, blankets, no bikini tops, and wine. Destination…all points of the island to relax on one of the many beaches. Inside of the outer road that circumferenced the island was a ton of legitimate biking trails. I could not believe it. I was legitimately riding decent bike trails in the middle of the French Riviera on some unheard of (by me) island. It was such an unexpected treat. It could have only gotten better if there was a hidden snow covered mountain with a lift that rides to the top. This island defines what I expected to see in the Riviera. Gorgeous views off the coast into the sea, people relaxing and enjoying life, and boats everywhere.

I ended up finding all three geocaches that are on this island. Once again thank you geocaching. I saw places I never would have been if it were not for this activity. At three different times today I was on the top of an ancient fortress. Each fortification was a stronghold for looking out into the sea from the edge of the island. Originally used for keeping a look out for pirates and other ne’er do wells. They were located on three of the four corners of this island. As sad as I am that Wifey was not 100%, I had an amazing time.

Tonight is the last night on the boat. Time to pack up, say our good byes and get ready to spend a couple nights in Monte Carlo. Hopefully they let me in and once there hopefully I find a way to rock it James bond style! I am so self-conscious around these hoytie toytie peeps that I bought a pair of five euro black shoes to wear to dinners. I never thought I would fall victim to such an act. I actually almost shaved too. The shoes are definitely getting left behind as an act of protest.

A select few photos here.

Day 9 Mahon Menorca Spain
Not much happening in this port town. It seems like a really small place that is only operating because of the tourism brought in by the cruise boats. That is the way with many cruise stops. These are not my favorite type of places. We wandered aimlessly for a few hours. There are some extremely nice shopping areas and great scenic vista points. We found one geocache during our mindless meandering. We got back on the boat about midday for another restful afternoon of almost nothing.  I mean nothing but napping. Wifey tripped and fell over her own foot today. She hurt her ankle but luckily a hospital visit was not necessary. In my opinion that is such an amateur holiday injury. Today was leisurely and relaxing. Nothing major to report, like many other cursing days. Barcelona stands out like no other cruising days. Tomorrow we are back in France.
There are always things that happen that are so hysterical at the time, but get lost as the brain has to push out old memories to make room for the new ones. Here is a list of fun things that we need to remember: Two Zoltans, Enda the poon hound, Dag Dagerstein the Captain that only fits the suit, big man waiting in our bed after dinner, and Esther: Lamont Sanford’s mother/father.

Day 10 Porte Vendres and Collioure France
Today turned out much better than expected. What we expected as another typical port day became quite an awesome adventurous day. We took a ride on Le Petit Train to Collioure, France. It was a beautiful drive along the coastline to Collioure and then back inland through all the vineyards and mountains and views of the sea and harbor. We found 4 geocaches while out and about today. Thank you geocaching for the hike! We went on a hike that we never would have found without geocaching. We ended up in places that no tour group, maps, or cruise guides would have taken us. We ended up in beautiful spots that were truly only known by locals. One spot was an amazing scenic viewpoint at the top of a hill with the harbor on one side and the sea on the other.
I dropped Wifey back at the boat, and had about an hour until the boat departed. There was one more geocache that I wanted to try and grab. I jogged all the way to the top of a hill. It was the opposite direction away from the harbor that Wifey and I had explored earlier in the day. This hill was again between the harbor and the sea with a great scenic view. Another place not on the tour maps. I found the geocache and made it back to the boat with time to spare. It was quite an exhilarating feeling that a boat might leave me in a foreign country because I wanted to go find one more geocache. There is no feeling like I might get left behind, the clock is ticking, Wifey awaiting my safe return…like an episode of 24 running through my head. Jack Bauer has nothing on me.
The Maître D’ tricked us tonight into having dinner with two other couples. They knew we were solo loners and hate everyone else. We turned down dinners the first couple nights so they stopped asking/inviting us. We had quite a pleasant time. We need to remember that we don’t actually hate everyone else no matter how much we insist that we do. Our dining companions were couples from the UK and Louisiana. She was beekeeper, which is a real thing.  The old man from Louisiana told us the rumors that some of the boat staff got pick pocketed and beat up the other night while out on the town in Barcelona. We later confirmed that this was both true and false. It happened, but the story was not nearly as interesting as the old man passed along. This old fella also told us a story about a cruise he was on in the past that also finished in Monte Carlo. He said there was a big hold up because several of the people on the cruise were not cleared to enter Monte Carlo. That got me worrying, since I recently had troubles simply entering Canader, I wonder what Monte Carlo will think of me. I sure hope they let me in…

A select few pictures here.

Day 7 Barcelona, Spain.
It won’t take much more for Barcelona to spring board to the top of my favorite places. We have only spent one day here and I really like it so far. Today we did our first (and only) of the boat provided excursions. We signed up for a biking through Barcelona tour. It was great, a lot of fun, very informative, and biking is a great way for us to see new places. Biking around all of the places we have been is what we should have been doing every day of this trip. Maybe today started a new tradition and we will do it every day after today. We are still here in Barcelona tomorrow and plan to hire bikes on our own to see a lot more of the city than we did during todays bike ride. We did not see that much of Barcelona, but what we did see was amazing. Barcelona is a great combination of ancient buildings with history and modern buildings with new stories and luxury.  We wandered around for several more hours after the bike ride. We saw a tiny dog with the biggest swingingest dick. I have never seen a dog with so much confidence. He has such a package that it just flopped out from underneath him, side to side, out both sides of his body as he walked. After we stopped following and staring at this 7^th wonder of a dog we went into a museum. It was built on top of 2000 year old ruins that were discovered fairly recently. The history of this city seems extremely more interesting than most other places. Barcelona is right on the Mediterranean Sea with marvelous beaches. However until recently (probably the Olympics), they never acknowledged the sea was there. They had their “backs to the sea”…that is their expression. Barcelona was mainly an industrial town. I never thought I would have enjoyed some place in Spain as much as I did. We are here overnight so hopefully we are going out for authentic paella for dinner, somewhere the tourists don’t go, ha. Even at 3pm a lot of stuff here is still closed. Most things open around 5pm we were told. Some areas were these ancient tiny desolate streets with shops that were just not open for the night yet. At 9am this morning, the beginning of our bike tour, we had the entire streets to ourselves. Everyone was still sleeping. Siestas are a legitimate thing here. Wifey is enjoying the fact that siestas are so well accepted. I do my best to fight them off.
I finished a couple more books about cameras so far this trip. Stupid Matt Urban.
We found 2 geocaches today and looked for several more. Geocaches are hard to find here because of the combination of poor satellite reception and the language barrier. All the streets are tiny and the buildings tower over most areas not letting the sunlight (or satellites) get to the ground.
We went out for dinner and had authentic paella, it was scrum-diddly-umptious! We also found gay-town while we were out tonight. That seems to happen everywhere we go. This town is really hopping at night. We stayed out until eleven which is unheard of for this elderly couple (half elderly anyway). Also found one more geocache while out wandering around at night.

Day 8 Barcelona, Spain day 2.
I would love to stay in Barcelona a few more days. Sleep has not evaded us this trip. We slept in later than I planned. We went straight to a bike rental shop and that is how we spent the day. We covered more ground but didn’t have much time to see many things. We did the one thing Wifey wanted to do, visit the Familia Sagrada church. We also went to the museum of Casa Batllo. My new favorite human Antoni Gaudi designed both the church and the Casa Batllo. I plan to learn and read much more about him in the future. He made a church, kind of a church so far, that even I would go to.  Barcelona has a great service of providing bikes to the locals that is unique, from what I have seen. It is called Bicing and it seems awesome. It costs 30 euros per year to be a member. They have bike stations all over the city. You can just grab one and then leave it wherever your destination is. Seems like a fantastic service. We couldn’t use it though, so we had to get a daily rental of a couple bikes made in 1925. Wifey went back to the boat a bit earlier than I did. She had an appointment. I continued to cruise around town on my awesome bicycle and found a couple geocaches, met some locals, and kept a guarded eye on my wallet.

A select few pictures are here.

Day 6

Sanary Sur-Mer France. This was the next stop on the Riviera. It is a gorgeous seaside town. The harbor was so adorable and full of every color in the rainbow, the kind of place you wished you could take a bit of because you know it would be tasty. The homes are built up the cliffs sides that overlook the Mediterranean. Must be an awful way to live, waking up with that view every morning. We were only anchored here for a few hours. It was only long enough for us to get a quick stroll around. On our tender ride from the boat to the harbor the tender driver got scolded for going too fast through the harbor. Seabourn, will you ever learn? We came to a very important conclusion today. This may sound racist (or frenchist), but every French person actually does walk around with a baguette under his or her arm. Some bikes even have a baguette attachment. Also, French dogs look French and at least one smokes. We saw a cute dog named Luna go for a swim today. It is fairly obvious why it is called doggie paddling. We looked for one geocache today with no luck. We spent probably an hour over 2 different attempts. Of all things it was a scuba diving related geocache. That was a pretty hard pill for Wifey to swallow. This is the saddest part of the trip so far. Update: geocache was missing, so we were looking for something that was not there. Team Sellers always wins in the end.

Tonight’s dinner on the boat was the chef’s tasting menu. Delicious. I enjoyed it very much. One of the courses was a sorbet palate cleanser with a splash of Sambuca. Apparently Sambuca is a black licorice tasting liquor. I brought this up to the waiter. He explained to us that Sambuca is an anise (pronounced anus) liquor. The language barrier had this conversation going nowhere. I insisted on telling people this story and that our definitions of anus liquor must be quite different. I planned to do this until I got thrown off this boat. I am still here and nobody else laughed except for my low-rent party of two.

A few pictures here.

Day 3
First stop on the boat is Portoferrai Italy. It is on the island of Elba, which is the island Napoleon was exiled. It was quite the beautiful little port town. I am sure the whole island is nice but we didn’t get to see much. We spelt until 10am by accident. Once we rose and shone we walked around for a few hours. We saw neatly arranged old buildings and streets. We descended down onto a tiny rock beach and walked in the water. The water and view were stellar. It was a locals beach I believe. Not many people were there, and it was at least a million steps down to get to the water and beach. It really was one of those places that people might call a hidden gem. It was on the opposite side of the island from where the boat docks. So it was a bit out of the way for everyday tourists. I have spent a lot of time learning, playing, and constantly messing with this new camera. So far so good. Hopefully the pictures will turn out OK. So far I really enjoy the learning curve, as long as we have decent pictures to show for it in the end. It has been a long time since I actually gained enjoyment out of learning. On our way back to the boat we found our first geocache of this trip.

Day 4
La Spezia Italy. It is amazing that on a boat of 200 guests every single employee of the boat can know that we are Mr. and Mrs. Sellers. We do nothing to stand out or fit in. We don’t socialize with the wine drinking, dinner invites, happy hour, tea, palates, or anything I can think of. Yet somehow they all know our name. That must be the sign of true first class service.  Not much happened today. A very lounging day. We walked around the town of La Spezia for a while. It is a very shopping orientated town, so that is fun for about 20 minutes. Nothing much else happened, not the most memorable of ports. We found 2 geocaches today. One in a phone booth and another in a cannon that took us 2 tries to find.

Day 5
Cannes France.  Wifey found a dive boat with her keen eye so she went for a dive. I strolled around Cannes like a tourist with my camera and best looking “I’m a tourist” hat on. While she dove I went for as swim in the sea alone. The water was amazing blue and warm. There were naked boobies out everywhere. Unfortunately, none of them were worth getting in trouble for staring. Cannes seems pretty great. They really boast a lot about their film festival, as well they should. I’d love to go to a film festival one day. Maybe Telluride. There are blocks and blocks, probably miles, of every fancy name brand I have ever heard of. None of them mean much to me, but just the sound of the store names makes chicks go crazy. I do like knowing there are expensive shoes called Jimmy Choo. That makes me feel like I can still someday do something with my life. Something meaningful, that can really help this world. Wifey said her dive was not so great. She described it as fairly uneventful and far from the best. She was just extremely happy to be under water for an hour, and in France to boot. That is an odd thing for a human being that is not Aquaman to say. We took a train ride for an hour through Cannes that gave us a fun tour with some history. Turns out that Wifey is a big fan of Le Petit Trains. They are a better than average way to see more than self-population would show me. We had dinner off the ship tonight since the boat didn’t leave until 11pm. I ordered foie gras for what I think is the first time ever, muscles, and fish. All quite out of character for me. I simply asked our waitress what the best things they made we’re and ordered those things. My dinner had an entire head and watched me eat him, and punished me by having bones. We found a guy named lazy bones. He is a trackable geocache. He was located at one of 2 that we found today. The first was at the top of the town looking down over all of creation. The other was in the middle of the town at a busy intersection. Luckily everyone was too busy paying $8000 for a shirt to notice what I was doing. We need to decide where we are putting lazy bones next. Either Spain or back home to the USA.

Fun note about today…there was an ornamental guy on Wifey’s dive boat with a tattoo in the English language that said, “the opportunity garsp is in our hands”. I hope this is the equivalent of all the knuckleheads with ornamental writing tattoos who tell you it is the Chinese symbol for peace, love, prosperity, etc… I have always hoped that the tattoo artist played a joke and those symbols actually mean “I blow goats” or “I love divorces.” I wish I had gotten a photo, but he was just out of camera range. I did manage to fit this guy from the boat into frame:

Newest photos of these days are here.

The backstory is that The August 2012 Holiday was a trip to celebrate the completion of 4 years of hell by Wifey. She is now a law school graduate. This trip was a Congraduations Trip. Completing law school and taking the bar exam is by far the biggest accomplishment of anyone I know personally. I have been telling people that she “just finished” law school. It recently occurred to me that I should be telling people that she “graduated”. When I say “just finished” it sounds like I am married to a 22 year old (super hot idea), or a dummy that took 15 years to complete law school.

Day 1 & 2:

The journey from Philadelphia was bad. Not the kind of bad that leads to awful, but the kind of bad that leads to inconvenience and sleepiness. We were delayed in Philadelphia for several hours. Luckily we were delayed in the airport and not while on the plane or runway. We landed in Paris with just enough time to run to the next gate and make our connecting flight. Not even enough time to pee after a 7-hour flight. Even though the physical Sellers Clan made it to the final destination of Rome, the luggage did not. We assumed there was no way for our bag to have ran to the next plane as fast as we did. We reported the luggage immediately upon landing, assuming the luggage was not going to make it. They told us it would show up on a later flight that would arrive in 3 hours, and then immediately the entire airport went on strike to protest our inconvenience. Since our next destination was pretty far away we decided to wait at the airport rather than risk not having the bag delivered to our hotel before our boat split from port the following day. We killed some time by taking the train to the Rome Termini and having some lunch. After some food, coffee, and fond memories of last summer in Rome we rode the train back to the airport. It was almost perfect timing for the next plane landing. I went to the luggage carousels with absolutely no expectations or hopes of ever seeing our bag again. I glanced up and saw the gold embroidery and was shocked. I actually did one of those movie double takes. Saw it, didn’t’ believe it was ours, looked down, then looked back up with bugged out eyes. I grabbed the back and quickly jogged back to the train station where Wifey was waiting. I faked that I did not have the bag. That made me laugh. We then boarded another train to make our way to Civitavecchia. We knew that would be an adventure with at least 1 stop on the rail system. Unfortunately we ended up at a terminal that apparently has a lot of trains that do not run on Sunday’s. We had to wait an extra hour or so for the next train that actually went into the town we needed to get to. We finally made it alive to Civitavecchia and did the mile walk from the train station to the hotel. The hotel we stayed at before the boat left was the Hotel Traghetto. It was tiny but had a bed. We slept like corpses. The next morning we scouted out how to get to our boat. We could see the marina from our hotel, so it could not be that far. We made it a much bigger deal then it should have been. We should have taken our bags and went straight to the boat. Instead we made 2 dry runs followed by the actual boarding of the boat. It was a lot like being in Vegas. “Hey, I can see the hotel, it’s right over there. Let’s just walk there.” An hour later you are still walking toward this accommodating mirage and it is somehow getting further away. Up until this point it did not feel like much was going in our favor. Finally we were on the boat and at this point everything was out of our hands and all the details rested on the shoulders of others. Having been on a Seabourn boat before we knew we were in for a treat and would be without a worry or care in the world as long as this boat didn’t sink in Italy. We got settled into our room and had something to eat and drink. We went up on the top deck at 5pm to see the boat off, had an early dinner, and got back into our bed shaped coffins.

The boat is small compared to other cruise ships. There are only 200 passengers. We are way out of our element with the crowd of people. We don’t talk the same, dress the same, or act the same. There is a chance we may be the first people ever thrown off this boat for not acting appropriately.

Pictures from the first couple days here.

Spoiler alert…we are home safe and alive. As for whether or not we are disease free I will leave that a mystery. I cannot wait to sit down and start writing about our travels and experiences. I know I say this a lot, but this really was the greatest trip of our lives. The last week in Africa makes everything else I have ever done pale in comparison. It seems a shame that I have to recap for myself the first 2 weeks just to get to the last week, but it has to be done for the sake of chronology and to keep the record straight. I have finally had a chance to start going through the pictures. We took almost 3000. I am going to post them as I get through them. Right now the first 2 days are up here. My recaps of each day will hopefully follow soon.

Safely back in America after the greatest experience of our lives. Thank you Londolozi and Seabourn. I can’t wait until I get the time to go through, post our pictures, and write about our experiences. Hopefully all that is coming very soon.