Today is June 4, 2013 and we have just left our summer cottage in Elkhart Lake, Wi, driven to Chicago's O'Hare Airport and are preparing to leave on a month adventure to Portugal, Spain and Italy. We have never traveled to Portugal or Spain before & I'm quite excited about getting to spend some time there seeing new things. We will also spend a few days in Italy, one of my very favorite travel locations!
The trip will be broken up into three segments. The first part will be a couple of nights in Sesimbre (just south of Lisbon, Portugal on the coast) & then 9 nights on a Viking River Cruise on the Douro River with friends that we have traveled with previously. One of the best things about traveling is meeting people who also love to travel & explore and finding great friendships that way. The four that we are meeting up with on the Douro cruise we have met on past trips on the Royal Clipper on a trip from Barbados through the Panama Canal on 2007/8 (over New Year's Day) and on a Viking River Cruise to China in 2011. The Viking tour will have us staying in a hotel in Lisbon for two nights and then we will set up camp on the Viking Douro ship for 7 nights...... I love being on the water & I'm really looking forward to this part of the trip.
When we get off the ship on June 16th, we will take the train from Porto to Lisbon and there we will meet our cousins from Topeka for about a week of road trip into Spain. We will head off to Seville and spend three nights there, then head to Malaga via Gibralter spending four nights there. We are excited to spend time with our niece, Heidi & her special guy, Diego while they show us their home base. At this point our cousins leave & head back to Lisbon for the Rotary Club Convention and we continue on......
On June 23rd (I think...) Gary & I continue up the east coast of Spain spending a night in Gandia and then on to Barcelona for four nights. From there we will be flying to Pisa, Italy and driving to Siena for five nights to enjoy the July 2nd Palio and all the the pageantry that comes with that historic medieval horse race. After the race, it will be time to fly home to Elkhart Lake where we will arrive just in time to be able to see the annual 4th of July fireworks on the lake on Friday July 5th.... Yes, I'm excited and am hoping that I can keep a journal up during our trip this time... ;-))
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