JOURNEY BEFORE THE JOURNEY

This trip has been in the works for a year.  That’s right, if one of your bucket list items is to float down a river in Europe while watching castles and cathedrals and vineyards go by in 2026 you need to start looking into the different options of which cruise company/river/and time of the year might suit you best in 2025.  Believe me, there is a lot of deciding to do.

If I got into all the details I’d have to write a book.  This trip was originally supposed to be the tail end of a trip to South Africa and only the two of us.  As the year ticked by the adventure has evolved into putting South Africa on the back burner, two other couples joining us, stretching the timeline later into the spring, and swapping out my husband for my daughter.  It’s a long story but I think it will still have a happy ending.  European river cruises are way more my kind of thing than his.

The past four months have been focussed on fine tuning the details and wrapping up loose ends.  The cruise is one week long but we arrive in Amsterdam a couple days early and get to do some touring of that fair city – first with a walking tour and then an evening canal cruise so there are airport to hotel shuttles and check in times and meeting places to nail down … and added fees for all of these goodies.

And once we got all that settled we asked the travel agent to tweak it all and switch who would be traveling with me.

On the third morning we move on to our cruise ship and begin our trip which takes us from Amsterdam to Basel, Switzerland over the next week.  Being as it is spring the itinerary covers a lot of tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils.  Thankfully there are other attractions for the less ‘flower friendly’ folks in our group.  The brochures speak of how wonderful it all smells when everything is in bloom so this is a trip for one’s sense of smell too.  I’m not normally allergic to pollen but it might be a good idea to throw in some Reactin.  Too much of a good thing might be bad.

There will also be a palace, some churches, many vineyards, a market or two and lots of amazing architecture.  If my Croatian yacht cruise is any predictor of this trip it will be a lovely experience meeting our fellow travellers.  The real bonus is that this time I will also have two of my sisters and one daughter along.  Win, win, win.

It’s down to the nitty gritty now … the packing part.  For three weeks there has been a suitcase open on the guest bed and a few pieces of clothing laying across it.  Two weeks ago it was decided amongst the sisters that for our last night we get separated from our checked luggage so if we want pyjamas and a tooth brush we need to pack such things in a carry on.  I’ve decided that a small back pack is the way to go because I might want one on our walking tours anyway so one of those took its place on the bed too.  It already holds my pyjamas – the one and only thing I have formally packed so far.

With the back pack able to hole a fair amount I’m not so sure I need the bigger suitcase so now the little one has joined the jumble on the bed.  Sometime very soon I will need to sort through all the ‘maybes’ and decide what is actually going to Europe with me.

In the meanwhile somehow this last week’s calendar has filled with a bunch of appointments and commitments that can’t be ignored and I kind of promised to cook a few things to keep people alive while I’m gone.  It makes me tired just to think about it.

Oh well … I can sleep on the plane!  Right? 

 

 

 

EARLY MORNING THOUGHTS

Many many years ago, back in the days of the Redvers Optimist, one of the contributors wrote a column called Early Morning Thoughts.  I remember that she blamed her being awake way too early in the day on menopause and what that does to sleep patterns.  Being as I am just a few years younger than she is this gave me something to look forward to.  Thank you Joanne; anticipation always adds to the experience!  

I liked reading what she had to say.  I can’t remember what she talked about now, but it was interesting at the time.  Maybe I acknowledged the situation as “okay, I will get less sleep but potentially I will think interesting thoughts”.  That time in my life came.  And went.  I survived.  All is good.

These days I have moved on to full blown Old Lady Mode.  I don’t know if menopause ruined my sleep patterns forever? Or does this happen to everyone?  Or is my brain so powerful it just can’t shut off?

Yeah, that’s probably it.  How would you power down a super computer?

Anyway, long story short, most of my early mornings feature at least an hour of solitude, coffee, and thinking about stuff.  It’s probably my favourite time of the day.

My mother used to tell me a similar story.  I was a teenager at the time and totally thought she was nuts.  In a perfect (teenaged) world we should be able to stay up till whenever suits us and then sleep in until noon.  She said “no”.  That her walk before 6:00 in the morning to fetch the cows in for milking was her best time of the day.  I dismissed this as the lunatic ramblings of a demented old lady (she would have been in her mid forties at the time).  This is yet another example of how my mother was right.  At this point in my life I could fill a book with the times my mother was right. 

I don’t have cows to bring in for milking (thank goodness, milking is a lot of work).  I have no doubt, though, that I would enjoy an early morning walk.  My version, in the summer time, is to wander around my yard in dew-wet grass to check out my gardens.  The warm sun, the scents of the flowers, the promise of veggies, even the cat following me around complaining about its empty food dish – it’s the perfect way to start the day.

I also have a daily adventure in the winter.  We heat our shop with a wood-burning stove that needs to be stoked on a regular basis.  We call this job ‘feeding the dragon’ and right after pushing the button on the coffee maker and feeding the dog his breakfast I suit up for the frigid walk to the shop to go feed our pet dragon.  No doubt my teenaged self would have considered this cruelty and possibly worth a report to Social Services, but for me (and I suspect my mother) it’s just a refreshing introduction to the day, and beautiful in its own right.

Sometimes the stars are brilliant in the predawn sky.  Sometimes it’s so foggy I can barely see out of the yard.  Sometimes the rime frost gives a breath-taking display of white crystals on dark trees.  Sometimes the wind is blowing at 60 mph and the snow is two feet deep.  I tend to walk faster on those days.

The satisfaction of keeping the dragon fed is just a bonus.  I like that I am doing a necessary job, I like that the fresh air is head-clearing, and I love the smell of wood smoke that follows me back to the house. 

The best part though, is that I will still have about an hour with just me, my mug of coffee, and my dog laying at my feet. 

And on a shelf across the room sits a photo of my mother, a smile on her face and an expression that I can’t help but feel says “See?  Didn’t I tell you so?”