Back Home 4th of July Edition

Happy 250th Everyone! 

As I finalize this post, I have been home for 19 hours.  I slept 11 hours, completed 3 loads of laundry, and made a batch of granola. (I'm sure this is no surprise to those who know me well.) I also had time to marinate upon and begin to process our magical trip to Norway.  Here are my wrap-up thoughts. 

Over the course of my 10 day trip, I visited 8 cities/towns: Oslo; Göteborg Sweden; Arendal, Egersund, Loen, Alesund, Eidfjord, and Bergen (not including two layovers in Frankfurt)... 

where I ran into Albert Einstein....  ....well not exactly. 

Over the course of the cruise, we traveled 1,114 nautical miles (2,063.13 km). I traveled with 151 fellow travelers, 6 Tauck directors and countless other Tauck team members, and approximately 100 crew members on Le Lapérouse. I consumed north of 10,000 calories a day (ok, impossible to calculate) and enjoyed weather easily 10 degrees above normal. 

On our last night together, one of our travel mates asked us to share our favorite trip moments around the dinner table.  The responses were varied.  "Seeing Alice Cooper and his band at our Oslo hotel" (wow, I completely missed that!) was the most surprising "moment" offered.  Others (in no specific order) were: "the Norwegian people--so friendly and warm," "the waterfalls," "the fjords," "the RIB safari--where I closed my eyes, wept, and realized how grateful I was to be here," "the scenery," and more.  I offered up that I was still processing and couldn't articulate one favorite moment quite yet. 

And now with the trip behind me, I realize that my favorite moment was a tapestry of  moments, including: 

• Marvelling at the spectacular scenery 

 

• Enjoying the small ship experience

• Revelling in the near perfect weather
• Loving the beautiful painted wood houses and businesses in many cities we visited

 

  

     

• Appreciating the terrific entertainment, crew, and Tauck directors on the ship 

                                                            

                                                      

• Eating ice cream cones

• Being a pescatarian for 10 days

      

• Finding the perfect souvenirs

• Looking around and enjoying the company of new and old friends

  

                                  

                                             

• Being away from the news, and
• Realizing I pulled it off (there was so much about this trip that was new for me)!

Would I recommend Norway to you? Absolutely!  The small ship cruising experience?  Without a doubt! Traveling with Tauck? No question! 

Thank you for traveling with me.  If you provided comments along the way, thank you for those and I apologize if I could not respond to each and every one. Writing the blog is a labor of love but doesn't leave a lot of time for doing email.  Thank you for understanding. 

Next stop: Uniworld's Holland and Belgium at Tulip Time leaving from Amsterdam on April 4.  Let me know if you'd like to travel with us (for real, not through the blog). 

After that, I loved the Ponant small ship cruise and I am quite confident there will be more cruising with Ponant in my future! 

Until then, Happy 4th, stay well, stay hopeful, and keep traveling.  Thanks again! 

Love, 

wendy