Getting Ready to Leave and the Last Minute Rush

Trying to avoid the last minute rush to get everything in order to be gone for nearly two weeks - it's hard!  Got a note from Mary Lee Hess last night - half of our faithful travel companions - with a loooonnnnngggg list of things she's working to pack in a carryon like Cheryl.  I don't think she's going to make it, but she can always be counted on for a spare this or that while we're halfway around the world.

This time our trip is a Viking river cruise of southern France, starting after our Columbus-to-Detroit-to-Amsterdam-to-Lyon flights which take most of a day.   From Lyon, we board one of the very nice Viking ships and start an eight-day cruise south toward Avignon.  My friend Tod Augusburger tells me that Avignon was the home of a Catholic pope who decided he wanted to be French and moved the papacy there, so that'll be interesting.

After disembarking in Avignon, we travel to an extension of three days in beautiful Nice, France, and have scheduled a day-to-night excursion to Monaco for a late afternoon/evening look at one of the world's most fabulous cities.

As always, I'll be putting up a nightly blog of our day and its wonderful activities in, arguably, my favorite foreign country - France.  Looking forward to the opportunity to speak some Francais with my southern Ohio accent - the ones that both my boys implore me "Dad, don't, you're hurting our ears" whenever I break it out.

And, just to show we're actually getting warmed up for an on-the-water experience, I've posted a photo of Cheryl and I on the famous Duck boats in Boston last week.   The Charles River may not be the Saone or Rhone Rivers where we'll be in France, but by gosh it was American and a ton of fun.  We loved it as I'm sure we'll love our trip to France, so hoping you'll have time to follow our latest adventure.  

Finally, a special thank you to my late parents, Woody and Dorothy, for insisting that I go to college so I could get a "real job" to be able to have opportunities like this.  Guess they saw that a future as either a cowboy or a rock star didn't hold as much promise as one in Radiology.   As almost always, they were certainly right and, of course, without my partner Cheryl the furthest we'd get is Circleville.  But together, en Francais!