Derelict in my Duties

I didn’t post on the whole cruise. The WiFi was bad and I never seemed to find the time. Let me just say that the trip was fun! We met lots of couples, saw many sights and enjoyed adding more countries to our itinerary. We have now reached 95 countries. We’re hoping to have 100 before 2025 is up. I’m going to post some pictures and hopefully will do better on the Rotterdam the next 2 weeks. We miss you all and want to thank our Florida friends for securing the house during the hurricane. Our power is still out but other than that, the house did well.

Our Trip

Horse show Croatia

Orthodox Church. We had an organ concert.

My favorite excursion was a visit to a Slavic family. Here are a couple of pictures. They are Tonya and Daniel in Osijek, Croatia.

They are rehabilitating their small farm. They live in town with 2 children. She’s a nurse. They were so welcoming and kind.

The Tesla museum. A weird dude. Used 18 napkins at every meal to polish and clean. He was a sheer, true genius.

This guy painted the icon I bought.

Coppersmith. Earrings for everybody!

Finally, we reached Bucharest! Pictures from there are below!

The Parliament. The second largest building in the world. Bucharest, Romania

Street art

Monument to the air force

Bucharest’s arc de triomphe!

Clark and Joan, our favorite couple on the cruise. Canadians.

Arrival Rotterdam

Ok I’m almost up to date. We arrived in Rotterdam yesterday (Thursday). We’re boarding Holland America’s ship, The Rotterdam, tomorrow for our transatlantic cruise. We flew from Bucharest to Amsterdam and then had a driver bring us to Rotterdam (1 and 1/2 hour drive). We’re staying in this old building now called the Hotel New York. It was built in 1905 and was the corporate headquarters for the Holland America Line. It’s a funky place. It is part museum, part hotel and part restaurants and bars. We’ve enjoyed being here and we can walk to the cruise terminal tomorrow. Today we walked and went to the Nederlandfotomuseum! We also went to see the original SS Rotterdam, which is now a floating hotel.

ROTTERDAM

The original Rotterdam

Our hotel lobby

Interesting art in the hotel.

Roscoe is relaxing in our hotel room.

The furniture is made to look like a trunk.

OK, IM CAUGHT UP!

We have had a very interesting trip. Viking has excellent “free” excursions. We’ve enjoyed our trip through the Slavic countries. We now understand more about the different people. How the Serbs are different from the Croats or the Romanians or Bulgarians. We have a much better understanding of how Yugoslavia came into being and the history of communism in this region. I’m still confused about Kosovo and its aftermath, so I will have to do some more reading.

The 2 weeks on the big cruise ship will be much different than the Viking trip. We will be visiting Honfleur in France and Weymouth, England. Stay tuned!