Celebrating Sixty: Birthday Cruises with Cousin Gerlyn
Last year in anticipation of our upcoming 60th birthdays, cousin Gerlyn and I decided to plan a river cruise together. This was a new type of cruise experience for both of us, and we began researching the best cruise company and itinerary for our first attempt. Since Gerlyn has Hungarian ancestry (in the line we don't share), we wanted to begin or end in Budapest. We settled on a company called Viva and booked our cruise on the Danube River. Gerlyn would be flying all the way from the US West Coast, so we thought it would be a good idea to add an additional travel experience. We decided on a cruise with MSC in the Adriatic Sea, and John would meet up with us to join in on that cruise to reunite the Travel Trio. We hit two snags. First, after booking the MSC cruise, we received word from Viva that the ship we were to be on, which was a new build, would not be ready in time for our cruise. Boo, all that research and decision-making for naught. Although they weren't our firs...