Bob:

While whiling away the long winter evenings remodeling our house, I yearned to travel again in the spring. After spending several months renovating the kitchen, repainting the first floor of the house, and installing new flooring in the kitchen, dining room, and living room, I was really ready for something completely different. Besides, the remodeling was deucedly expensive and I finally decided it wouldn't cost any more to travel to Europe than to keep working on the home! But I don't have fun flying anymore, and we didn't have the option of taking a train like we did to cross the U.S. in Wanderung 13, so that left finding a ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

It turned out that cruise ships regularly reposition across the Atlantic in the spring and fall, something like the swallows migrating back to Capistrano only much bigger, a lot slower, and considerably wetter! The cunning plan I devised was to hitch a ride with one of several ships that left from Miami in the Spring and ended up at various ports in Europe. Then we would drive around a bit and fly home, but then use the return-trip tickets to fly back to Europe in the Fall, travel around a bit more, and then hop on another cruise ship as they migrated back to the Caribbean for the Winter. After all, with a plan as simple as that what could go wrong?

We had never seen Spain, so we finally settled on a cruise on the "Brilliance of the Seas" from Miami to Barcelona, thinking we would drive around Spain for a couple of weeks afterwards and fly home. Monika used the internet to make some preliminary reservations of hotels and a rental car, and after some shopping for a medium-sized suitcase and a few new clothes, we were set to go.

Monika: