everyone was having a great time and enjoying being in London. Westminster Abbey, London Tower, Buckingham Palace and just wandering through the streets seeing what there was to see. in addition to my quick jaunt to France, i also went to Wales. a colleague of mine from work lives there, so i took the opportunity to visit.

lots of rolling hills, sheep and castles. oh, and some very long words with a lot of vowels. araf. not a long word, but one of the few i remember. i had a great visit and got to see my friends studio in addition to the countryside. i was introduced to Ali G (not literally) and McVitties Digestives, it really doesn’t get much better than that. i was only there for one evening, and then headed back to London the next day.

since we were celebrating a 30th birthday in addition to New Year’s Eve, we decided to go big and went to dinner at Mr. Chows. what a party that was, they really did it up and we did it up on top of that, and it was an evening to remember.

a good time, a good trip, had by all.

after my cruise there was a lull for a couple of years before i went on another international trip. but the next one was a lot of fun…….

a friend of mine said, “hey a group of us are going to London for a 30th birthday celebration do you want to come with?” there opportunity was, knocking on my door again. hell yes i want to go. there were five of us traveling together, and we rented a flat for the week. we were going to be there for New Year’s as that is when the actual birthday was and that was the reason for the trip. if your birthday falls on any holiday you tend to get overlooked a bit, so a 30th birthday blow-out in London was one way to make the event special.

little did i realize that two other friends were also going on the trip with us, but it was a surprise for me, so i didn’t know they were coming until they knocked on the flat door. crazy! even crazier was that they were only in London for an hour before they had to be at the train station to take the Chunnel to France. “we’ll buy you a ticket and you can come with if you want”….ok, really? who is going to pass up a trip to France, so off i went goodbye London, hello Paris.

we were in Paris for less than 48 hours…….we had our trusty Michelin guide and went on the full walking tour and saw famous peoples homes (or at least the doorways), Montmartre, Lapin Agile, the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame to name a few. we stayed at a funny little hotel Notre Dame something in a room that was barely big enough for a bed and night stand and maybe you could get the bathroom door all the way open if you were standing in the right spot (on the bed). the wall paper matched the bed cover, which matched the curtains…..something to be said for over coordination. we also popped into to a few cafe’s, one of which was the Cluny.

ah the Cluny…… new friends were made and a lot of beer was consumed. my two friends were there earlier in the evening, while i was resting at the hotel. they showed up at about midnight and said they were at this great place and i should go. well alrighty then, let me put on some clothes and let’s go. so off we went to start the night, again. we hung out there for awhile, then moved off to a jazz club, and then my friends left, but i remained with some new friends. i spoke no French, they spoke no English, so we settle on communication via a very poor version of Spanish. we must have been entertaining to say the least.

post jazz club at about 4 AM i get the idea i really want to visit Jim Morrison’s grave site. i REALLY need to see it while i’m there. i’m not even that big of a Door’s fan, so it’s amazing how one little mention of something can become the biggest thing ever after a multitude of alcoholic beverages. the cemetery didn’t open till 6 AM, so we killed time at a cafe and then at the hospital. no, no one was injured, one of the people i was with worked there, and though it would be nice to give me a tour of where they worked. they had very clean bathrooms.

off to Pere Lachaise. i received my map of the cemetery and we made our way through. i gave my best to Jim and Oscar Wilde as well, and then decided it was time to make my way back to the hotel as we had to leave that afternoon to go back to London……..

phone box photo courtesy of venere.com
Jim Morrison grave photo courtesy of rankopedia.com

is what my friend AP asked me one day while we were at a basketball game. he was a frequent guest with Princess Cruises and received a 2-for-1 coupon for a South American cruise. he said that he’d pay for the cruise for myself and our friend ST, and we just had to pay for the airfare and excursions.

having never been to South America or on a cruise before I jumped at the chance. ST and i used to work together, but she had moved to Maryland the year before the cruise, so getting to vacation with her for 10 days was a bonus.

the trip started in Montevideo, Uruguay and ended in Santiago, Chile. we cruised along side Argentina, around Cape Horn then back up the other side. we stopped off in Port Stanley – The Falkland Islands, Ushuaia – the end of the world, Puerto Montt and Punta Arenas. those aren’t in order of visit, just in order of how i remembered them. there may have been other spots too, but those few stand out.

the cruise was fun, although i was probably one of five people under the age of 30. needless to say the bar at the “disco” was always empty. i don’t think i’m what you call a cruise person, as the multiple days at sea wore on my nerves. i did become quite the Scrabble player though. it was pretty terrific having everything you could possibly want in walking distance as well……the gym, food, spa, movies, a casino, a library, a swimming pool. we made this trip in December though, so it wasn’t really swim weather. i didn’t need a parka, but shorts and t-shirts were not part of the wardrobe.

i’m trying to recall what stood out on that trip, and there are a couple of things….i was trying to buy a sweater for my Mom in a local shop, and they were having issues with the cash register and i almost missed my tour bus. the people on the bus were not pleased with my lack of respect for time and i immediately had 10 new sets of grandparents watching out for me the rest of the day. penguins in Punta Arenas – the first of many trips that involve penguins, a life size chess board and calling my Mom from a pay phone at “the end of the world”. oh, and at the very beginning of the trip we had a half day tour of Montevideo and at a museum one of the guides asked me if i’d like a job there. huh, wonder what would have happened if i had said, “yes, i’ll see you after the cruise”.

i’m really thankful that AP gave us that vacation opportunity, as that was the last trip i took with ST before she passed away. how do the sayings go, seize the day, seize the moment, don’t let opportunities pass you by…..however they go, you get the point.

photo courtesy of Tours in Putna Arenas – www.turismopaliaike.com/puntaarenas-eng.htm

that’s what my first trip to Europe was, 5 countries in 10 days. it was just after high school, and there were a group of 10-15 kids and 2 adult chaperone’s, in this case a teacher and one of his friends. looking back i have to wonder how that teacher thought chaperoning this trip would be a good idea.

we were one of three schools that travelled together on this particular adventure. the other schools were from Georgia and Virginia. we were the crazy California kids.

we saw London, Scotland, Amsterdam, Germany and Belgium…….as you might imagine that trip is now a blur. a few memories stand out though, including, but not limited to: falling down a very narrow flight of stairs in the Scotland hotel trying to get to the shower first in the morning (not first=no hot water), sitting (getting altitude sickness) in the very last row of a very steep & old theater seeing a Shakespeare play, landing in a pile of dog poo while playing flag football, an extremely long ferry ride-but there was a disco aboard, a scary youth hostel with crazy (crazier than us) kids next door, space muffins at the UFO cafe, Belgian waffles and being so excited about staying in a real hotel with feather comforters, that i slept through the Cologne, Germany visit.

the really sad thing is that i don’t have any photos from that trip. i can’t recall if i just didn’t bring a camera or if i lost the album. i only have one photo in my scrapbook, and that is of the group of us at SFO getting ready to leave. photo not included to protect the not so innocent.

photo courtesy of brusselspictures.com