September, 2023 Archive

London July 22

Sunday, September 10th, 2023

We arrived at London’s Heathrow airport a day after leaving California and tried to get off the Underground connection at Gloucester Road, the station right by our hotel. But the train didn’t stop until the next station, South Kensington. After the confinement of the airplane, the walk back in light rain pushing and pulling our rolly suitcases along a street of Edwardian rowhouses, large London Plane trees and a locked private park felt like stimulating exercise rather inconvenience, but also a traveller’s warning to be ready for the unexpected.

IMG_6942 (more…)

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Europe 2023

Sunday, September 10th, 2023

This was our first trip abroad since we went on a Gate 1 Tour to Spain in 2018. That year, we also traveled to India, Hawaii, New York/Vermont as well as to our homes away from home in Lund B.C. and Sun Valley Idaho—satisfying our prosperous retiree appetites for extending knowledge, connecting with old and new friends, and enjoying fresh pleasures.

At the beginning of 2019 I felt guilty about the continuing indulgence, but by late Fall of a year with no travel, the yen was back. We signed up for a February 2020 tour of China which included a boat trip up the Yangtze River ending at the city of Wuhan.  In January reports arrived about a coronavirus epidemic that started in a Wuhan market and was spreading through the country.  We cancelled our reservations and decided to use the refund to visit Portugal on our own, studying guidebooks and websites, making hotel reservations, arranging meetings in Lisbon with old friends from Cornwall and with my young co-worker and her boyfriend. But by March the epidemic had spread world wide and we were happy to hunker down at home. (more…)

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