Spanish? again? But I’ll have to learn to say Bar-thuh-LONE-uh…

I’m getting behind on my blogging! As I wrote, our next trip is a cruise across the Atlantic on Holland America. It will take 27 nights and 16 ports and culminate in an orgy of Spanish ports. Of all the ports, there only two that we have been to before this trip, Barcelona and Lisbon (where we got ourselves hilariously lost with three other couples and GoCars; read all about it http://worldcruise12.blogspot.com/2012/07/gocars-exciting-way-to-explore-and-see.html) , not counting Fort Lauderdale and Dover, the ports where we embark/disembark.

So, yet again, we are trying to practice our Spanish but I’m sure the Spaniards will fall on the ground in hysterics, especially since we will be speaking not only very halting Spanish, but Mexican Spanish not Castillian Spanish. About all I know of Castillian Spanish is the the ‘s’/soft ‘c’ are sounded like ‘th’ so Barcelona becomes Bar-thuh-LONE-uh. Spanish is a very musical language; we’ll just be sounding a bit off-key!

The best part of the river cruise is that our children and their spouses will join that trip in Vienna (and 2/3 of us will see the Lipizanner horses at the Spanish Riding School). I’m not at all sure what we will do for the four—FOUR!—days we will stay in Vienna. Luckily, the River Princess includes several tours at each stop in the cost of the trip. How nice is that!

It’s still 168 days until departure and yet I am going into full-blown, what-will-we-do-in-[fill in the city name] and what will I wear when we’re there. One thing we did on our world cruise last year was overpack. I will NOT overpack. I have to repeat that: I will NOT overpack. That resolution is helped immensely by the fact that even though we are flying first class from London to Istanbul, Turkish Air only gives you one, count ‘em, ONE free checked bag. So Randy and I have resolved that we will not take the seven (yes, I’m embarrassed to say, SEVEN) bags we took last year. We will take one checked bag and one carry-on bag. Each. It will make life so much easier!

Soon I will start thinking about perhaps, maybe, possibly, shopping for ? Clothes? Camera equipment? A new computer to take with us? That’s aside from the computer I will probably have to buy for Randy as his is having more and more BSODs (blue screens of death—all you Apple people can just shut up. I KNOW you don’t have those things. And nobody hacks an Apple. Etc, etc, etc. I’m a PC person and shall always be a PC person. So there.

So, off to peruse the internet to find tours and clothes and cameras and computers. And, oh yes, a new Corvette! Red, of course.