Monday 15 August 2011

Vacation Countdown 1

Dear Internet,

Today all I can think about is holidays and I only have … let me count…. 13 days of work let until vacation! That is not a lot of alarm clocks! We did take a holiday in June, it’s a bit of a long story but here you go…

We were married last summer in June, back in Canada – It was a perfect day that I’ll talk more about at another time, but as we were married so far away we thought that taking a honeymoon would be a bit of a joke as we had already flown so far to get married to begin with, so we just took a couple of days in a downtown hotel and then headed back to catch up on all the gossip and scandal that we missed cutting cake and posing for photos.

Anyhow, we decided that we would postpone our honeymoon for our first anniversary and go for a week somewhere nice and romantic in June. So in January we started to plan (as I do) and list places to go (another love of mine). The requirements weren’t too picky, I wanted somewhere premium with good service and fancy, I like to be on the beach but don’t like to swim in anything but the pool so it’s nice to look at. Derek on the other hand limited locations much more by requesting that we not go to a typical summer sun holiday location, which knocked out most of Europe and that Canary Islands. Finally together we decided that we wanted to take 1 plane (no stopovers) and that we didn’t want to have a return flight that arrived in the middle of the night at the end of the holiday thereby ruining the rest and relaxation of a week away – who likes to return from Lanzarote at 4am? Not us that’s who!

So we went to visit the travel agent and she suggested Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. All great places until the troubles started at the beginning of the year with the exotic destinations and they because unsafe for tourists. So we decided Morocco and started to look forward to a week away in Agadir.

And everything was going perfect, I bought a travel book, we picked out things to do and places to go for dinner and then in April we received notice from our travel agent that all flights to Morocco were cancelled and to look at arranging another holiday – what the Hell?

At least we got a full refund and ended up after much deliberation and a bit of a spontaneous move booking a Cruise with Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. We have been on a cruise before and we didn’t really like it (for various reasons which would not be suitable to discuss here) and we decided that it checked a lot of the boxes and what the hell! So in June for our anniversary and honeymoon we departed Malaga, Spain to Valencia, Spain; Rome, Italy; Livorno, Italy and Agaccio, Corsica. It was lovely. We sat by the pool, read books, ate fantastic food and fought the urge to never, ever leave the ship.

In fact we loved it so much that we returned home and promptly (with days) booked a second cruise for our week off in September where we’re heading to: Venice, Italy; Koper, Slovenia; Ravenna, Italy; Bari, Italy; Dubrovnik, Croatia. And now I just can’t wait!

Oh, Internet I wish you could come too but everyone deserves a holiday and this will be yours - with the exception of a few tweets but I will be sure to return to fill you in on all of the exciting and not so exciting bits!

Yours,
Alison

PS a few memories....

By the adult only (perfect holiday spot for me) pool:


He can't go long without the phone, on our room balcony:

Departing Malaga, view from the room:

You're on holidays so you can't possibly know what day it is, so we'll let you know on the elevator floor!

Room view of Ajaccio, Corsica from the room

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