2023 AFTERTHOUGHTS & STATISTICS + NEW ADVENTURE STARTING SOON!

A week or so after we returned from our remarkable trip to Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland last year, we posted our last blog about our final days in Scotland (Edinburgh), and closed it by saying, “Stay tuned for our afterthoughts on our whole trip. It’s fun to be able to share our adventures with you.”
Yes, it is VERY fun to share our adventures, and we so appreciate the comments we get as we cruise along…by auto, boat, plane or train. We also thank you for your patience since we never posted those afterthoughts, etc. I’m sure you’ve been biting your fingernails awaiting that final blog ….maybe not!  🙂
We are about to start another adventure (more in a few minutes), and we’ll continue to post blogs about it, but I thought I’d relay some excerpts from our 2023 that never got posted.

AFTERTHOUGHTS FROM IRELAND, WALES, ENGLAND & SCOTLAND
Rereading our unposted afterthoughts just now brought all those wondrous experiences back again, including the words we often used as we were driving around during this amazing and delightful adventure:
Beautiful! Stunning! Lush! Gorgeous! Fascinating! WOW! Such variety! Yum!  So green! Look at all the sheep, cows and Highland “coos!” Nourishing! Dramatic! Mystical! Astonishing! Sacred! Breathtaking! Spectacular! WOW! Such simple beauty! Astounding! Remarkable! There is beauty everywhere! More WOW’S!
It was also fun to put together the statistics:
Ireland & Northern Ireland – rental car 5213 miles
Wales to Devon – rental car                        644 miles
Devon/Cornwall – friends drove                 539 miles
Lake District to Edinburgh-rental car        1978 miles
Taxis (Dublin, Oban, Edinburgh)                116 miles
TOTAL DRIVING MILES:            8490 miles
Trains from Devon to Lake District             365 miles
Boat Trips – Ireland, England, Scotland        75 miles
Ferries: Dublin-Wales, Oban-Isle of Mull,
Mull-Iona, Mull-Lochalaine + Orkneys   175 miles
TOTAL TRIP:                                  9106 MILES!!
The hundreds of photographs we took (all with our iPhones!) captured the rolling countryside hills, mountains, rock formations, stone walls, bridges, buildings, magnificent churches, cathedrals, abbeys and castles (some in ruins yet often still in use, and all quite sacred).  And then there were the countless lakes, rivers, waterfalls & awesome views of the Atlantic Ocean, the Irish Sea and the North Sea.
We learned a lot of history by visiting museums & going on walking tours and reading up on places before or during our touring. We also loved the art galleries, the variety of trees & flowers and the warm hospitality everywhere we went. It’s still hard to capture and describe how extraordinary it was, but we can still “feel it” in our bones, our hearts and our souls.
Feel free to scroll back through our blog posts, if even just to look at all the photos. It’s a wonderful reminder of how much beauty there is in the world!

NEW ADVENTURE STARTING VERY SOON!
On March 20, we fly to Boston and from there go to Amsterdam, where we’ll spend a few days before embarking on a 15-day Viking River Cruise down the Rhine, Main and Danube Rivers to Budapest. After a few days there, we’ll fly to Dubrovnik and spend 2 weeks along the coast of Croatia, which we keep hearing more & more about. We’ll take a ferry to Venice, spend 4 days there and then fly (via Helsinki) to Iceland for another 2 weeks. I’ve started calling this part the “Grand Finale” and Gary has schedule two guided photo tours here–one featuring glaciers and the other featuring waterfalls. We’ll stop again in Boston for a few days before heading back to California on May 26.  We’re also grateful that our new neighbors next door will house-sit while overseeing the remodeling of their house. Perfect!
We feel unbelievably blessed to continue taking these “trips of a lifetime,” in keeping with our motto, “HAVE A BLAST WHILE YOU LAST!” So that’s what we’re doing!
We look forward to sharing our adventures with you once again.
Bless you for traveling along with us!