Less than 2 weeks until we leave

Less than 2 weeks and we will be in Europe. Time continues to fly by and my to do list keeps getting bigger.

Well last week was successful in that I finished up planning our last ports of call. It has been so long since I blogged I cannot remember which onces I still need to talk about. Oh yes, Glasgow, Inverness, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Brugge.

Glasgow we are going NCL's Glasgow on your own. That is where NCL will provide transportation to and from the city. Then well we have several hours in Glasgow to explore it ourselves. On our last Mediterranean cruise we did a few of those and it seemed to work out well. Highlights in Glasgow that we would like to see are Glasgow Cathedral, Medieval City Trail, the Burrell Collection.

In Inverness we are doing a photo excursion where we will be with a professional photographer and he is suppose to take us to one of the most picturesque areas in the United Kingdom. I think this will be a different excursion; one we have never done before.

People who don't know us Brian is the photographer while on vacation. He feels that it is his job to get good pictures from all the places that we go. Then it is my job to come home and make up a scrapbook with all of those pictures. Brian always takes hundreds if not thousands of pictures from our vacation. Going through all of them is no easy job. His pictures are usually phenomenal and we usually enlarge a few of them and hang them up on our walls at home. Currently this is the picture we have hanging up from our last trip in Alaska. So I am excited about this excursion and see what kind of pictures we will bring home.

One thing I don't know if we should also do in Inverness in Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle. See we port in Invergordon and there is not much to do there. Well Inverness is 45 minutes away from Invergordon. Our photo excursion does not stat till 1pmg so we have 5 hours in the morning to do something. Should be do Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle too?



Next is Edinburgh. We are doing another NCL excursion where is takes us the Rosslyn Chapel which is where the ending of the Da Vinci Code is filmed and then independent time in Edinburgh. In Edinburgh we are going to explore the Royal Mile and possibility Edinburgh Castle. We watched the Da Vinci Code movie Friday night. It was surprising good from my point of view. I am not into movies but I enjoyed seeing Paris, London, and Rosslyn Chapel in the movie.


Now onto Amsterdam. There we plan to explore on our own. On of the places we would like to visit is Anne Frank's House. There is one problem with that. I have never read The Diary of Anne Frank. So Friday night we also went to the bookstore and got the book. I am currently reading it and hope to finish it before we leave. (Brian needs to read it too). I am only 50 pages into and I really like it. Reviews I have read about Anne Frank's House is that if one has never read the book, they do not appreciate the house. Therefore I will have that book read before I get there. Then of course while in Amsterdam we will walk in the Red Light District. Just something I feel we have to see to believe. I have many other ideas to do while there but we will see what happens that day.


Our last port of call is Brugge. Here we could go to Brussels but its farther away and larger. Reviews I read were that we would feel overwhelmed and like we did not see much if we went to Brussels so I have opted for Brugge. One person called Brugge “mini Venice” so of course I have to go there now! We hope to go in the Belfry Tower, visit a few churches, eat some chocolate and maybe even a Belgium Waffle. There is also biking along the canals so that is an option too.


Now that everything is basically planned I am putting all the info I have gather into a binder so we will have all the info organized. Brian is in the process of reading the binder so he knows of the options we have to do. I am also using my multicolored pen to highlight and make notes on the important info. I feel like I am back in school. (All of my college notes were taken with a multicolor pen with each color having its own meaning).


Plan for this week is to read Diary of Anne Frank, finish organizing the binder, and start thinking about packing. Remember I must pack light for this trip. I keep telling myself that!

I plan on writing more often as time gets closer. Also my computer is going with us so I hope to update frequently during our trip. Hope everyone enjoys reading about our adventures and feel free to post comments or questions.

13 day British Isles and Northern Europe Cruise

In 3 weeks we will be in London starting our 13 day British Isles and Northern Europe Cruise on NCL's Jade. I have been working hard to try and plan everything out so we can see and do as much as possible. When we travel there is no relaxing. This may be our only time at these places and we want to make the most of it.

Here is our itinerary. Start off in London then go Paris, Falmouth, Cork, Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow, Inverness, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Brussels/Brugge and back to London. We only have 2 days at sea. That is quite an itinerary. Also interested on how we will like NCL. We love Royal Caribbean however NCL's itinerary was better so we are giving them a try. We tried Carnival for our last Mediterranean Cruise and they did not live up to Royal Caribbean.

London is probably what I am most looking forward to seeing. We have 1 day in London before the cruise and 1 day after. The first night we will be near London Bridge and second night in Victoria. While there we hope to visit Tower Bridge, Tower of London, London's yet, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and House of parliament.

Something I just now realized was that England, Northern Ireland, Scotland all use British Pounds. We were suppose to get our Euros this week but ran out of time (purchasing our new patio set instead). I am so glad we did not exchange all of our money to Euros now. Unfortunately the US dollar is even weaker to the pound so things over there are going to cost us even more.

I think I have our transportation figured out in London. This will be our first time usually all public transportation so it could be interesting. We will use the underground around London and take a train to Southampton where the cruise leaves. I think we are going to purchase all of our tickets once we get there though.

I am still trying to figure out how to pack light so we are not carrying all of our luggage around London. (I bought a new larger shoulder carrying carry out last week too – I am excited about it). We are now thinking of leaving the garment bag at home. That means no tux or formal dresses. I am a little sad about it however the less luggage the better! With NCL freestyle cruising there is less formal attire. We usually love dressing up but we cannot be carrying all of our luggage throughout the underground and train stations.

In Paris our only hope is to go up into Eiffel Tower. We are thinking about climbing the first two levels (approx 1000 stairs) then taking the elevator to the top. Wait and see how that goes.
Falmouth we are going to explore on our own. We hope to visit Pendennis Castle. They have cannons that go off at noon and that would be neat to see. After that we will see what we find to do.

Cork we are also exploring own our own. Now I am not sure if the cruise is porting in Cork or Cobh. We booked a Titanic Walking tour in Cobh. We also hope to visit the Cobh Cathedral. We may have to take a train to Cobh. Should be another interesting adventure. In Cork one could visit the Blarney Stone and even though it would be neat to see and kiss it, I think we are going to pass on it this time.

In Dublin there are several cathedrals and castles to see. I think we are going to get off the ship and see what we can find. There is nothing that we really want to see or do there. Just see how the day goes but it will probably we St Patrick's Cathedral and Dublin Castle.

Then there is Belfast. At first it did not appear to be much to do however they have a nice welcome center and Belfast Big Wheel (similar to London's Eye). So I purchased tickets to ride it. That is when I realized that everything is in Pounds not Euros! But at least I figured that out prior to going there. After our ride, we will probably explore the city and see what we can find.

The remaining ports are Glasgow, Inverness, Edinberg, Amsterdam and Brugge. I have not planned those cities out yet. That will be this weeks project.

Welcome

Welcome to Amy and Brian's World Tour. I am Amy who will probably be posting everything. This was all my idea. I got this idea because I found a blog from someone who is on NCL (Norwegian Cruise Line) Jade (name of the ship) right now and he is posting all about his trip. Well we will be on the Jade in 3 ½ weeks and all of his posts have been insightful and informative to me. So I decided I wanted to create my own space to talk about all our trips.

Traveling is something Brian and I love to do. When we were in college we would travel to places close to home. We enjoyed that but always thought it would be neat to go somewhere fun, exciting, far away. But being in college we knew we could not do anything till after graduation. Well graduation finally came and we got married. Our first cruise was our honeymoon to Eastern Caribbean. It was a lot of fun and that got us hooked on cruising.

Our first major vacation was to Hawaii. We were there 10 days and stayed on 4 islands (Maui, Kauai, Hawaii, Oahu). This was where I got all my experience planning for a vacation. We did not use a travel agent – I planned it all! We island hopped staying on each island 3-4 days each. I was a blast and highly recommend island hopping when traveling to Hawaii.

A year later we decided to cruise the Mediterranean. We started in Rome and went to Naples, Florence/Pisa, Sicily, Venice, Croatia, Barcelona, Nice. It was amazing and has been our favorite vacation. Venice is my favorite city. Because we loved the Mediterranean so much we are going back to Europe to tour London, Paris and the British Isles.

We have been throughout the United States including Alaska. Alaska cruise was very different than anything else we have done. It was a nice vacation and the scenery is beautiful. Our favorite part of Alaska was glacier hiking. That was an adventure! But something we will always remember. Other major cities we have been include San Diego, LA, Dallas, Las Vegas, Chicago, Miami, Disney World, Myrtle Beach, Virginia Beach, Washington DC, and New York City (including New Years Eve 2006 in Times Square).

When we need a relaxing vacation we opt for cruising the Caribbean. We have done Eastern and Western Caribbean twice each. Someday I hope to do Bermuda too .

If you have any questions about any place we have visited please post a question and I will respond. Maybe at a later date I will go into more details about everywhere we have been. But for now my focus is our 13-Day Around the British Isles & Northern Europe starting in London on NCL's Jade.

On my next post I will go into details about our upcoming cruise.