Week 27, June 30 - July 6, 2025
Kona keeping watch under the desk with his fave Moosey toy It was a quiet week around here. The weather has been too hot to really enjoy…
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Week 26, June 23 - 29, 2025
Kona “enjoying” the new-to-us wagon I was off for business travel this week to Charlotte, North Carolina. If you live in the US right…
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Week 25-2025, June 15 - 22, 2025
We have rocks!! The landscaping at the Bestie Bungalow got finished this week. Without a doubt, the big news this week is that the…
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Meet Your Hosts
Spoiler Alert: There are LOTS of tulips featured on this trip. Hi all. It’s time to kick off another set of blog posts for an adventure - this time it’s two weeks through Europe - including London, The Netherlands, and Belgium with a combination of touring on our own and our first ever river cruise and Adventures by Disney trip! I thought I’d take a moment to refresh our “Meet Your Hosts” post because, well a lot has changed. We are Kara and Gayle. Gayle also happens to be a travel agent…
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Let’s Go To London
We’re off on our journey! Sunday, April 6, 2025 Hi all. It’s Kara getting us started off today. After the change in travel plans that Gayle discussed in The Journey to the Journey, she added a surprise for this trip - an upgrade to business class on the Indy>Chicago and Chicago>London legs of the trip. We both prefer to fly Business Class or at least Premium Economy on all international trips. We were booked premium economy for both international legs, but Gayle snuck in and surprised with…
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Welcome to London
Fresh off the plane and ready to hit the town! Monday April 7, 2025 Arrival at Heathrow It’s Kara back to start us off again today - fitting since I woke up first. I slept lightly on the plane, but enough that I felt pretty rested. I woke up just as one of the crew was coming around with hot towels. He took my breakfast order. Just as I got my seat put back up, he arrived with my coffee, orange juice and breakfast tray. I opted for the sous vide egg bites with the roasted tomato sauce. There…
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Day 4 - Harry Potter Studios Deluxe Tour
Making notes in the ledgers in Gringots Bank Hi all. Kara starting off today. Today actually started way back in 2017. Gayle brought a group of students on study abroad to London. The Harry Potter Studio Tour had opened outside of London and she and some of her students went. To say I was a little jealous was an understatement. I listen to the Harry Potter books (narrated by the incredible Jim Dale) all the time. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban got me through my doctorate. I even…
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Day 6 - A Tale of Two Trains
Ready to leave London the Eurostar It’s Kara starting off today. We needed to be downstairs at the train station by 7:30am this morning so we were awake quite early. Sadly, we each slept very badly last night so, it was an especially rough start to the day to have to be up and moving so quickly. The beautiful lobby of the St. Pancras Renaissance. We went down to the lobby around 7:20am. While Gayle filled up our water bottles from the Club, I got us checked out. We then headed to the Eurostar…
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Day 7 - Exploring Amsterdam
It’s Kara starting out again today. One of the ways we like to learn about a city is through its food. Fun fact, we’ve had at least two other food tours booked together, and we’ve had to cancel both of them due to delays and other issues. So, gratefully, we got up this morning to gorgeous warm weather with full sunshine and went to meet our tour guide, Roman, at 10am. (Fun Fact: It rains 266 days out of the year here, so the fact we got two beautiful days back to back is a little out of the…
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Day 8 - Let The Adventure Begin
On board the AmaLucia Hi everyone. Kara starting off again today. We had, as our British friends would say, a good lay-in this morning and allowed ourselves to sleep in until about 8:30am this morning. The only thing on our agenda today was to check out of the hotel, have a nice brunch or lunch, and head to the ship. More on how that could have gone differently a bit later. Breakfast We showered, dressed, and finished packing and took our bags down to the bell stand by 11am. I checked us out…
