Leaving Laredo: Working Our Way Back to Sicily

Well, Hallothanksmasevepiphany is over, and it's time for us to hit the road again. We enjoyed our 'break' in Laredo. There was enough time to accomplish all of the business and health care tasks on our to-do list.

Eye exams and new glasses.

Time to replace my Chromebook. We also updated our phones. We've found that traveling involves a lot of apps, for which we were constantly challenged for storage on our last round of travel. Both phones have space for additional storage, and one phone has a slot for an additional SIM card.  

We voted. The sun was so bright that day I couldn't even look at the camera!

Early voting was at the fire station, where there was this cool old fire engine.

Emily treated us to some new tech for Christmas. John replaced his ancient Kindle with a Paperwhite. I got a bluetooth speaker, which will make it much easier and pleasant to listen to my music library. Thank you Emily! Speaking of the music library, I spent some time (with John's assistance) updating and getting my music into YouTube music and accessible from my phone.

Since I won't need my iPod any longer, I was able to donate it to Music & Memory, where it will be used to help support healthy aging for a senior. If you've never seen the documentary Alive Inside, I highly recommend it. Right now it is available for free on Amazon Prime.

And this happened during our visit! Marina is going strong.

We enjoyed having a nice long visit with Emily, particularly for the holiday season, but I will write more about that in another blog (I'm behind, as usual!).

If you've been following along, you'll know that we identified a city of interest for retirement in Sicily, Capo D'Orlando. Our larger travel plan is to return there to 'live' for the months of April and May, as a sort of trial run / confirmation. If you'd like to see it, here's a 15 minute video that was filmed there.

It's so beautiful! We look forward to returning.

In between now and then we have a full schedule of cruising, starting with a Panama Canal cruise. It's a bucket list cruise for us and happens to be our 40th cruise. Cousin GG is joining us - yay! - so we are heading out to her place in California to visit this week before setting sail on January 17.

The Travel Trio will be reunited, although I expect this trip won't require those cold-weather clothes!

We'll be getting our chance to see what it's like, in a sense, to live on a cruise ship! It's an idea we always fantasized about doing in retirement. 

I'm really looking forward to opportunities to swim and snorkel, as well as taking in my favorite views!

We will be using 5 different cruise lines, so I imagine my next cruising blog post will be a compare and contrast, as well as reporting on what it's like to live on a cruise ship.

Below is our schedule. It's not too late to join us! When not on a ship, we'll be staying in Miami. We won't have a car, but we're happy to meet up with anyone who wants to see us there. 

January 17 - February 1 Panama Canal Cruise, Emerald Princess, Los Angeles to Ft. Lauderdale

February 2 - February 6 Bahamas, Carnival Sunrise

February 6 - February 11 Mexico and Grand Cayman, Celebrity Summit

February 12 - February 24 Bahamas and Western Caribbean, MSC Divina

February 25 - March 2 Bahamas, Carnival Sunrise

March 9 - March 29 Transatlantic, RC Symphony of the Seas, Miami to Barcelona

We'll have very limited WiFi and data access during this time, so there may be delays in responding to messages if you are trying to reach us.