Romantic notions

Romantic notions are wonderful. A dreamer’s dream of what might be out in the great beyond. An imagining of what’s to come with spectacles in full rosy bloom.

When we began planning our departure from the U.S. to Italy, we harbored a romantic notion or two. Something along the lines of crossing the Atlantic on a tramp steamer like Mark Twain, wearing white linens and perched on the ships deck, feet on the rail in all our mustachioed (?) Twainian splendor. We did, in fact, check into steamers crossing the Atlantic, but, holy guacamole, there was no bargain to be found there. “That’s okay”, we thought, “let’s just get over there and start our new lives!” as though our new lives hadn’t already begun each day we were living them. Airfares we also ridiculously expensive, perhaps due spring break, but just prior to purchasing our tickets we watched a travel YouTube couple talking about repositioning cruises in the spring and fall, typically at reduced rate and also typically, at half capacity. The reduced rate we found to be true, the half capacity? Not so much. This ship is nearly full, though with 16 nights aboard, only a couple dozen children of various ages are aboard with the adults seemingly coming from all across the world. I’ve seen families playing mahjong, heard Scottish, French, German and Australian accents, met a couple from Iceland and enjoyed speaking with crew members from Indonesia, Macedonia, Morocco and the Philippines.

Bill & I are typically more free-form travelers, going to and fro as the days unfurl and the rhythm of new places present themselves, but it will be nice to arrive to Europe without jet lag having slowly crossed time zones along the way. The itinerary of this cruise gives us a chance to dock at some ports we’ve not been to before, and the length of the cruise gives us time to settle down before our early May house closing in Rome.

Apologies in advance if I haven’t responded to your many kind comments, texts and wishes. Data aboard ship is exorbitant and my measly 300 minutes is down to 200 even though I’ve really only used maybe 20 minutes but, whaddyagonnadoo?