Day 6 April 20 Haarlem, Keukonhof Gardens We left the port in Amsterdam at 4am and motored to the town of Haarlem Holland, arriving at 8am. This is an exciting day. We boarded the tour busses and took the 45 minute drive to the famed Keukenhof gardens. These gardens are only open 3 months every year and during spring when tulips bloom. Over a million visitors come year from all over the world during these spring months. The bulb farmers of Holland have planted 7 million bulbs in these extensive gardens. These gardens were truly a magnificent visual overload of beauty and awe. We spent a total of 5 hours wandering through all the paths and enjoying every step. I will upload some photos but I wished I could share the fragrance of the gardens particularly ... read more

Day 4 April 18 - Amsterdam River Duchess This day is a transfer day from the hotel to the cruise. We will board the Uniworld River Duchess for the 10 day cruise through Netherlands and Belgium. We arose, made a cappuccino, showered, packed and went down to breakfast. This hotel has a very nice buffet breakfast. Many European hotels only offer continental style breakfast of cereal, cold cuts, hard rolls and yoghurt. Here we have enjoyed scrambled eggs, sausage, baked beans (I know who wants beans for breakfast), fresh fruit, cereal, many breads for toast, ham and cheese, etc. They even offered fresh baked donuts!! We never buy or eat donuts so here, we each splurged and had one and loved it! We sat and chatted with Bill and Jane until 11am and then had to ... read more

Day 1 and 2 April 15 & 16 - Travel DaysWhat a beautiful day in Denver this morning. But, after hearing the upcoming weather report, we looked at each other and said "let's get the heck out of here"! Denver is expecting snow starting this afternoon through he weekend. Unbelievable!! We showered, finished packing and waited for our Anthony's limo driver to come and take us away to the airport. Our driver, Eric was very chatty and once he learned that Jim worked with NASA back on the glory days he just couldn't ask enough questions. Our experience with United and TSA couldn't have been better on this trip. This is our first vacation after receiving our GOES cards. (Global online entry system). In January, Jim and I completed our application, were interviewed, finger printed and ... read more

We slept in, went down for breakfast and showered. Then we stopped by the business center to print our boarding passes for tomorrow departure flights. The hotel indicated that it is a 30 minute taxi ride to the airport and it is a mandated fixed price of 30 Euros. A leisure start to this our final day. I am wearing down and getting stiff and sore so we decided easy does it today. We finally wandered out and decided to go to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. It is close within walking as just a few blocks. Everything here when asked how far is 5-10 minutes when really it is much longer! This museum is about 15 minutes from our hotel. We both got in with senior pricing so 14 euros total. Age has its benefits, we spent ... read more

Another really early morning as we had train tickets to Madrid that departed beautiful San Sebastián at 7:30am. Last night we showered, packed and laid out our clothes for today to quicken our departure to the train station. The hotel called a cab for us and it arrived quickly. Interestingly, he shoved all 4 of our luggage into the front passenger seat then proceeded to give the big ones a kick to close the car door. Traveling is an adventure and you see it all. The train station was pretty close and only cost 9 euros. We found our check in, tickets were in order and we headed to platform 2 and waited the arrival of the 1st leg of our train to Zaragoza. While standing we began chatting with a very nice lady on holiday, ... read more