#2971 back from vacation

sailing on the Danube through the Wachau Valley

Lizzie and I returned to Salt Lake City on Friday night after spending a couple of weeks in Central Europe. We spent the first week on a Danube River cruise, starting in Budapest, Hungary with stops in Slovakia, three stops in Austria, and ending in Passau, Germany. From there we stayed three nights in Prague, Czech Republic, then two nights in Amsterdam, Holland. It was fantastic, and I had a great time. We had sunny days and rainy days. We ate delicious food and drank lots of wine and beer. We had some amazing pastries. We walked and walked and walked and walked. We took hundreds of photos. It was a glorious time, and I'm looking forward to sharing it here with you over the next few weeks. 

The question I get asked the most frequently when I return from traveling is "What was your favorite thing?" My favorite thing about my vacations is the person(s) I am traveling with, in this case, my little sister, Lizzie. She is a fantastic travel partner. It helps that we have similar tastes and likes, so we rarely (if ever) clash about things to do or see or places to eat. She has excellent map reading skills and I am beyond impressed with the way she puts together a little walking tour for us that takes us around to the places we want to see in an organized manner. I basically just follow her around, taking photos and admiring the scenery. I think she likes putting the little tours together on her Google maps, and I'm quite content to let her :D

Aside from spending two weeks with Lizzie, I really loved the river cruise itself. Cruising is such a fun way to get from place to place. A cruise is not restful for me. The time ashore is pretty limited, and I like to squeeze every drop of fun and shore-time I can everywhere I go. Our ship, the Viking Aegir, does have a lot of public spaces, especially up on the sundeck, but we had some rainy afternoons and evenings, so it was kind of hard to find a place to sit quietly to write or read. Our stateroom was small and as we were below the waterline, WiFi was slower down there, so Lizzie didn't have a chance to blog daily like she usually does on our trips, and I didn't have space to spread out to work on the travel journal I wanted to do. 

I am going to complete the travel journal. I carried my sketchbook/journal with me everywhere and would often pull it out to jot down notes or make a little sketch when we stopped for a meal or a snack. I bought tons of postcards and stickers to put in it, and of course, I have a lot of photos I can add to it as well.  

Now that this trip I've been looking forward to for eight months is over, what is next? I don't mean another vacation, necessarily, but I am a person who likes to have things to look forward to. October will be the start of the fourth quarter which is my favorite time of the year. I love the 'ber months (September, October, November, and December.) I'm looking forward to getting a new phone and probably a new computer, since this one is pretty old and I don't think it will even upgrade to Windows 11. I'm looking forward to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and to celebrating my mom's birthday with her in December. I'll be making a ginormous life decision in the next few weeks, and I'm excited about that, too. 

In the immediate future, like the next seven days, I guess I'm looking forward to going back to work (I just keep telling myself that!) and to starting a new book I just bought yesterday. I'm looking forward to playing around in my travel journal and remembering fun things from the trip. I'm looking forward to cooler temperatures and the shift from summer to fall, my favorite season, and to the slowing down of all the things in my life that usually happens around this time of year. 

I'll sign off for now. I need to do a little work on our bookkeeping and make a shopping list. It's time to get back to cottage cheese and yogurt; the days of three course meals for lunch and dinner are over! One thing I am NOT looking forward to is stepping on the scale LOL I've got no regrets, though; I'd do everything just the same (well, maybe except for one thing in Budapest, which I'll probably tell you about.) 

More to come...

words to live by