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Published: December 26th 2009
Well Merry Christmas to everyone! We know that vacations in January are AWESOME because Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years make the wait MUCH easier...time just flies by!
We had an amazing Christmas surrounded by family & friends, and topped off with an awesome Charger's win against the Titans!!
Which reminds me of a very important point. We will be spending Super Bowl Sunday innnnnn........ Portugal! Yes, sadly, we realized (of course after booking everything) that we will be in Portugal for the Super Bowl. This is a bit scary for a few reasons. 1) If the Chargers actually DO make it into the Super Bowl, it will SUCK to be away from San Diego. 2) We aren't exactly sure where the Super Bowl will air in Portugal. Since our hotel is a bit outside of Lisbon, we might have to resort to watching it in our room (Satellite TV
should air it) and that means watching it on a 12" TV alone. 3) The Super Bowl is on in the afternoon here in San Diego...which means it'll be 3 AM in Portugal. JOY!
We are trying not to think about it too much. The BF is pretty depressed. We *of course* want the Chargers to go all the way, but would be really sad to miss out on the spirit here in San Diego!! SO I guess if the Chargers don't go all the way, we have a reason to be glad. But uh...Go Chargers!
Our flight was supposed to leave LAX on January 20 around 6 PM and arrive at London Heathrow around noon. So we scheduled a flight to leave Heathrow for Barcelona around 5 PM, assuming 5 hours would be enough time to go through customs and get to our gate. Well, STA called to inform us that our flight from LAX-LHR was pushed back to 9:50 PM, which has us at London around 3:30 PM. 1.5 hours isn't enough time to be CERTAIN to make the flight to Barcelona! And our flight to Barcelona is inexchangeable & nonrefundable. So Virgin Atlantic was kind enough to change our outgoing flight date for free (since it's their fault!) so now we're leaving on January 19th! We're excited to add an extra day to our trip, but notsoexcited to have to book an extra hotel room in London for the night of the 20th, because money is already running low. Thankfully Christmas & Ian's graduation from SDSU will keep us above water a little longer, but for now it looks like we'll be packing picnic lunches from the cruise every day, and will eat them through our 4 nights in Portugal. LOL.
So you guys know all about the cruise by now because I've written out a full itinerary (I think!) but you don't know about Portugal! We're staying in a city called Estoril, which is kind of a seaside resort town about 15 KM from Lisbon. Apparently (and hopefully!) it's a short metro ride into Lisbon's city center. We have a room with a balcony overlooking the coast, so it should be really pretty! There are a few towns that are great for a short trip from Estoril, like Sintra. Sintra has a beautiful castle & National Park we're looking forward to visiting. We're excited to be out of the big city enough to explore the less-trodden path of Portugal, but close enough to see the city of Lisbon as well.
The only things we still need to pay for are our hotel in Portugal, our shore excursions from the ship, and our hotel in London for that added first night.
Have I mentioned our shore excursions yet? We booked 2 out of the possible 6 excursions, because we've already been to Barcelona & Rome (so we'll explore those on our own), we hear Athens is easy to explore on our own (and if anyone can do it, we can!), and Malta is one of those places that will be neat to visit, but not anything we've really looked forward to (or even known about!) prior to booking the cruise, so we aren't too sad if we miss out on anything. Our shore excursion in Alexandria takes us into Cairo (with police escort and armed guards...not sure how I feel about that yet but trying not to think of it) and then to the pyramids, sphynx, and river cruise with lunch on the Nile. Our excursion in Turkey takes us to Ephesus which will be really, really cool.
We're really stoked to go to Egypt & Turkey, because you never know when it will be too dangerous in that area for tourists to enter. There's SO much history in that part of the world, and it's really sad that most of it is off limits because it's too crime & terrorist ridden. That being said, I'm glad we're doing it now!!
This trip has us visiting 3 continents. Can you believe that??! England, Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta, & Portugal are in Europe. Egypt is in Africa. And Turkey is really interesting. It's the only country (I believe) that is divided into two continents. Part is in Europe and part is in Asia. Izmir, where we dock, is considered part of Asia. Obviously we want to explore Asia & Africa more in depth (and we DO feel it's kinda cheating to only be there for a day or two & consider it visited), but it'll be neat to say we've been to 4 of the 7 continents. We have said (since we started dating!) that we'll visit Australia for our honeymoon, and I'm sure we'll do South America sometime in the next 10-20 years (on a cruise, if nothing else). I reallyreallyreally want to go to Antarctica too. I know it sounds crazy, but how cool would that be?! Penguins are really cute. 😊
We consider ourselves really lucky to be able to go on this trip!! We've made a lot of sacrifices to do the traveling we've done & know this will be the last big trip for quite awhile. Can't live rent-free with the parents forever now can we?
I'm sure I'll write again once we're packed and ready to go!!
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Lauren
non-member comment
So Exciting!
Katie and Ian this is SO exciting! I am thrilled for you guys! You get to travel to so many places! Very awesome! 2 friends of mine have recently been to Ephesus and they said it was amazing! Definitely somewhere I would love to visit one day as well! I didn't know you were going to Cairo! Now that is a rare place to visit! Can't wait to see pictures from that excursion! Thanks for posting your blog link on Facebook! It is officially in my gmail reader, so I'll get your updates for sure! Have fun and enjoy your trip! Love u guys! -Lauren*