Off to Scotland!

You know me. I'd rather have an adventure than a new sofa, a fact to which my sorry loveseat will attest!

The DH and I are frantically finishing up our last minute packing for our trip to the UK. We leave tonight, taking a red eye hop across the Pond, and arriving in London tomorrow morning. Then we'll take a motor coach to Portsmouth where we'll board our ship, the Caribbean Princess.

Of course, despite the title of this post, we'll be seeing more than Scotland. We'll stop at one of the Channel Islands and have three Irish ports of call as well. Our last stop will be at Le Havre, France.

Even though we'll cruise all the way around England we won't spend much time there. That's ok. We've been to Great Britain a couple of times, keeping mainly to London and Wiltshire. This is our chance to explore the non-English parts. I can't wait to see Glasgow, one of the Orkneys, Invergordon and Edinburgh. Here's our itinerary:

We're celebrating some things on this trip. First, there's our anniversary, which was yesterday. I told a friend of mine this cruise was 12 days, the longest we've ever done. We wanted to see if we could get tired of a ship. My friend said to be careful lest my DH and I get tired of each other.

Not a chance. There's nothing I'd rather do than spend time with him. (He very wisely agrees that he'd rather be with me too!)

We're also celebrating 4 1/2 years of my being cancer free. This coming November, God willling, I'll have five clean years under my belt and be pronounced "cured."

 For the past 3 years, I've also been battling a lung condition called NSIP. It's an auto-immune syndrome that attacks my lungs. I've had a particularly rough spring. The virulent coughing left me breathless, exhausted and unable to sing--kind of important to me because I'm a classically trained soprano. I still don't know if my voice will ever come back. But--and this is huge--I seem to have turned a corner and I'm breathing so much better now.

Believe me, getting enough oxygen is all it's cracked up to be.

So we have plenty of things to celebrate on this trip. I'll be taking tons of pictures, which I'll share when we return. We made the conscious choice to unplug for this cruise. Neither the DH nor I are taking our computers. I'll take notes in my little moleskin notebook and share my thoughts and experiences with you when I get home.

 Talk to you soon!