Kamie woke-up at 6:02am this morning. He was awake, lights on, and out of bed before 7:30am yesterday. I cannot get this man out of bed before 3pm sometimes at home and this is what he chooses to do on vacation?? Eh. We arrived in Half Moon Cay, Bahamas today. Half Moon Cay is Carnival’s privately-owned island so it’s only Carnival employees and Carnival cruisers on the island. It’s one big beach party. Sand like flour. Aqua waters. Beautiful. We put on our swimsuits, lathered and sprayed 100 proof sunscreen everywhere, and caught one of the first water shuttles over to the island. I swam a lot more than Kamie. It was the kind of place I could stay all day if I had some sort of floaty and Kamie would stay with me. However, within ... read more

Today we got on the ship. The End. Just kidding. It was uneventful, however. Breakfast on the hotel’s dime at a small restaurant next door was good. Check-in was easy in Miami and rather quick. The “problem” with today was our boarding time was early (11am) so we were onboard before 11:30am and they were refueling so the entire ship was non-smoking until almost 1:30pm/2pm. Kamie was not a happy camper. Actually, later we learned he could have been inside smoking in the casino but neither of us thought about the casino since it is the only indoor smoking area on the ship. We had beautiful views of Miami leaving the port. Our ship actually turned-around in the small harbor to leave the port! Never seen a ship do that before. We got fantastic views of ... read more

Today we drove to Memphis. We left, as usual, 3 hours past the time we thought we would, but the drive was beautiful. It was sunny and 71 degrees. Once we got through the Arkansas mountains, it was all flat cotton fields as far as the eye could see. The cotton looked ready to be picked with the full, fluffy branches. Neither of us had been down this way in years so it was neat to see again. We drove most of the way with the windows half down. We stopped in Jonesboro, Arkansas (population around 67,000) at a small Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market so Kamie could use the bathroom and he grabbed a hot dog at the deli. He’s a cheap date - $1 hot dog with free mustard. ? We sorta fell in love with ... read more

We are sitting in Munich, Germany airport. We will be here for another 3 or 4 hours… then a 10 hour flight to Chicago…. Then a 4+ hour layover in Chicago…. And we will finally be in St Louis on Wednesday the 18th(your date and your time). I think we just added-up that our flights and etc is all over 29 hours. Maybe more? We had an early flight out of Krakow so for “breakfast” on the plane to Munich they served us cold sandwiches – brown bread, egg, and beef pastrami. I didn’t even open the package. Kamie ate his! He will eat anything. We just had a small meal in the Munich airport. I ordered a beef burger and “german fries” (according to Kamie but they were just fat fries) and Kamie ordered a ... read more

My feet hurt. It was a long, long day. We were up before 5:30am and we got into our new hotel room in Krakow at 7:05pm tonight. We were supposed to have a formalish dinner with the group here in the hotel – salad, pumpkin soup, duck confit and xander fish (whatever that is) but we just couldn’t do another 2-hour dinner. We told our tour guide we were going to McDs and left. It’s 8pm and we have ate (Burger King in the mall across from our hotel), we have our aching shoes and socks off, and we will probably both be asleep within an hour. I do know one thing… we hit over 10,000 steps today! A teeny old lady and old man in the seat in front of us on the bus today ... read more