So we have decided to leave the boat a day early, so this morning will be our last day on the boat. The staff and boat is lovely, just not for us. We feel we spend more time on the boat or bus than the actual towns themselves. Still missing one piece of luggage… maybe we will find it on our way home as it seems to be in London!
I don’t think we will be taking another river cruise anytime soon!
We have been so use to Cayman prices that I was excited to see Bert was only 4 Euro’s on the boat. Only to see they were less that one Euro in the stores. We ended up sticking up for our day on the river! 
We actually have a really nice stateroom. Here are a few photos.
Well this was technically day 3 I think, but it was I r first day in Germany so I will call it Day 1. As you may know not much has gone right on this trip and we are still without luggage. We were told the boat didn’t leave Frankfort until the next night so we decided to go to Heidelberg one day before we went with the group and the we would spend the day the group went in Frankfort looking for our luggage. Q
We went to the train station and bought tickets for the 10:20 train knowing we only had a few minutes to make the train. Well we ran to the platform to find the train gone. So we had to take one that required us to change trains 3 times. Well we got on the first one ok, but the 2nd one was delayed so we know missed the 3rd train. We did eventually make it commenting that absolutely nothing has gone right this trip! We walked from the train station into the city center and unfortunately didn’t have much time as we did not want to miss the train back to Frankfort. Once in Frankfort we took a walk back to the hotel where we left our carry on bags and picked up a few items on the way (some clean clothing). We got to the hotel and amazingly we got one of our checked bags (mine) and headed off to get on our boat.
The boat was nice and we got settled in with what luggage we had and started to try and find Richards. The status online is “lost”… so we ar not expecting to see it anytime soon. We went the briefing and then had dinner on the terrace which was nice as we didn’t really have all that of our clothing we did t want to go to the main dining room for a 5 course meal.
After dinner we had a few drinks and headed out to the Christmas markets for a few drink and made our way back to the boat when they started closing up the market stallls.
Everything started out nice on our trip to Germany. When we got to Miami they even let us check our bags all the way to Frankfort! To bad we didn’t realize that we wouldn’t be making it there! We arrived late in Charlotte and ended up being able to run and jump on a plane to London. After arriving in London we couldn’t get a flight to Frankfort so we had some unexpected time in London! We did a bit of siteseeing yesterday and some shopping as we were missing our luggage.
They provided a hotel for us and the hotel is nice but dinner last night and breakfast today was just awful!
Today will be a bit more sightseeing and hopefully make it to Frankfort to night!
I get a weekly blog from Becoming Minimalist and I wanted to share it:
’Tis the season for unreasonable expectations.
Over the next several weeks, televisions, magazines, and websites will offer us countless images of the “perfect” holiday season.
Beaming faces, sparkling eyes, glistening gifts, and bountiful tables of food will be shown on media platforms of every sort. Many of these images will stand side-by-side with corporate logos and retail stores.
The turkey is from Butterball. The necklace from Kay’s. The soda is Coca-Cola. The toys were purchased at Walmart. The coffee is Folger’s. The slippers are from Kohl’s. And the new vehicle with the red bow in the driveway is a Lexus.
It would seem, from the image on the screen, these items are essential for a perfect holiday. Because obviously, the smiles are bigger, the family is happier, and the lights shine brighter—if, and only if, we buy the consumer product to make it so.
This is not a new strategy from marketers. All year long they communicate the subtle (and not-so-subtle) message that our lives will be better, happier, and more fulfilled if we buy whatever they’re selling.
But their message reaches a fever-pitch during the Holiday Season and nobody is immune to their meticulously crafted persuasion.
I assume one reason for the effectiveness of these ad campaigns is because we all desire a joyful and merry holiday season. We cherish our time with family and want it to be picture perfect. We love our kids and want them to be happy. And we all enjoy times of celebration and desire them to be memorable.
But let’s remember one important truth today: You don’t need any of those things for a perfect holiday season.
You don’t need a new car in the driveway for a perfect holiday season. You don’t need new jewelry for a perfect holiday season. You don’t need slippers. You don’t need a perfectly-decorated 10-foot tree. And you certainly don’t need a large pile of glistening presents underneath it.
You don’t need any of those things for a perfect holiday season.
The holiday season is about family, and thankfulness, and faith and love and peace. It’s about reflecting on the year that was, and looking forward to the year that can be. It’s about counting blessings. It’s about slowing down long enough to appreciate the things in life that matter most.
And too often, the consumeristic promises and fake-photos keep us from enjoying the season. Instead of slowing down, we speed up. We rush from store-to-store (or website-to-website) filling our shopping carts with all the things we think we need. We fill our schedules with increased commitments and responsibilities. We max out our credit cards.
We get so frustrated and weary chasing the perfect holiday season that we never take time to enjoy the one right in front of us.
But Melody Beattie once said, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”
Once we slow down enough to notice our blessings, we begin to see that we already have everything we need for a perfect holiday season.
And maybe that is what worries marketers the most… that we would begin to recognize all the things we don’t need for a perfect holiday season.
Poor yabbey must have had a rough day as she is really in need for some cuddles tonight.
It is hard to believe that a month from now we will be exploring the Christmas markets in Germany!
We made another trip to Cuba almost 4 years to the date from our last trip over there. We expected to see changes in Havana and you definitely saw some changes, so good and some not so good. One thing you can see is that the city is starting to lose the charm it once had as it is becoming more commercial. On the other hand there is quite a bit of construction and they are keeping the charm of the architecture and not tearing down the buildings to build new modern hotels.
We also used AirBnB for the first time and were really happy with our place, in fact I am not sure we would stay anyplace else if we went back.
We did not do much new this trip- the two days were spent exploring Havana and then the 3rd day we ventured out to the western part of the island.
The reindeer are relaxing by the water!
The Johnsons 