Bonney's
Vacation Sagas

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Pictures of You

Pictures of you,
Pictures of me,
Hung upon your wall for the world to see
Pictures of you,
Pictures of me,
Remind us all of what we used to be

We met our shuttle transportation downstairs at the scheduled time after checking out. The trip seemed shorter that the one arriving in the taxi. Imagine that!

There was time to spare at the airport and we finally boarded for our 3:15 PM flight home. Flying against the jet stream it took us ten hours to get home. With my achy bones and muscles, I couldn't get comfortable in the chair and was fidgeting for what seemed like hours.

We finally touched down, deplaned, picked dup our bags, and went through customs. When I phoned Rudy, who was picking me up, it turned out he was about fifty feet in front of me. Lesley had made arrangements to take a shuttle back to her house, so Rudy and I said goodbye as we headed for the parking lot. Rudy stuffed all my junk in the car and drove me safely home. Thanks, Linda, for loaning Rudy to me.

Some final thoughts…

My two favorite countries on the cruise were our stops in Copenhagen, Denmark and Tallinn, Estonia. It surprised me a lot that our visits to Sweden, Finland, and Russia were disappointing. Except for the churches highlighted, Catherine's Palace, and the Hermitage Museum, these countries were depressing. In Russia, no one on the streets looked happy at all and on every block there was some kind of police officer or service person standing guard for something, I'm not sure what. And those two days in Russia were the only times our guides warned us about pickpockets on the streets and in the museum, cathedrals, and palace. So those parts were somewhat discouraging. It was odd that nobody in these countries mentioned communism or Vikings.

I wouldn't go back to those three cities unless it was specifically to go to Catherine's Palace that was magnificent even though most of it had been restored from WWII bombings.

Old Town section of Tallinn was quaint and very nice. Pretty. I don't know if it was originally that way or just fixed up for tourists. I think it had been there a long time. We were able to go in the open-air marketplace for the few souvenirs we were able to get. This is what we had expected for all our stops. But, what we found here was nice.

Lesley's biggest complaint during the whole trip was not being able to get a good cup of coffee. Onboard coffee was bad according to several other passengers. Even the Café Latte bar where you pay extra had coffee that was too strong and tasted bad. Why couldn't they serve up some of that great Jamaican coffee?

I noticed that Carnival still serves better pizza than Royal Caribbean.

In summary&ellip;

Don't let my sarcastic humor make you think the trip was anything but fantastic. It would have been nice to have a back that didn't hurt. But, the trip was good. The Jewel of the Seas is smaller than Voyager that we've been on several times, but very, very nice. There were a lot of older citizens, so we weren't the oldest turkeys on the ship. It would help if there were more meeting areas/lounges so they could do karaoke every night.

The only other thing that would have improved our trip would have been to travel with a small group of friends. That way, Lesley would have had company other than me on some of the walking, rather than her trying to kill me when I was trying to keep up.

Seriously, having additional friends on the cruise enriches the experience.

If you are interested in cruising, I hope you'll give me a call and let me book the perfect cruise for you.