5/7/07 I don't know if this message will be in English or Spanish when it gets posted because I am typing it on a computer in Spain and all the text on this website is in Spanish. Hope you can read this!
As you know, we have been on a 13 day cruise between Galveston and Barcelona, which is why there have been no new updates for a while. The cruise ended yesterday morning, and we made our way to the train station in Barcelona, took a train to the airport, and flew to Seville. Elaine's nephew, Jerry Traughber, picked up there and we will be staying at their home at Maron Air Force Base until Thursday. His wife Lori, and their two children, Mitch and Maddie, have made us feel very welcome and we are enjoying our visit. The daytime temps are in the low 80's, so this is a good time to be here. Tomorrow we will go exploring in Seville.
The cruise was quite enjoyable because we were with two other RV couples: Joe & Carla Calwell, and Mike and Marilyn Harrison. Additionally, friends of Joe & Carla's, Madelyn and George, were also at our table. So every late afternoon there was a cocktail party at someone's room, then we went to the live entertainment, then had a delicious dinner. Since we had the late dinner seating, often we didn't finish until after 10 PM. Not wanting to go to bed on a full stomach, we often continued with more entertainment or dancing in one of the lounges. Most nights we were staying up until 1 or 2 AM!! The fact that we were having to advance our clocks an hour forward about every other day also affected our bedtimes. Then we wouldn't get up until 10:30 or 11 AM. This was a very unusal lifestyle for us, as we usually hit the sack by 10 PM and are up by 7 AM. So this cruise timeline was a real departure from our usual habits, to say the least. We did make a real effort to continue our walking and exercise program, which was a good thing or we would have been blimps by the end of the trip, the way we were eating...
The only ports we stopped at were Key West, Punta Delgada in the Azores, and Cadiz, Spain. We have been to all of these before so our adventures in those places were pretty low key. Luckily, we had pretty good weather the entire 2 weeks and only slightly rough seas one night.
Friday we fly back to San Francisco, Monday I have to have another surgery on the same skin cancer spot on my shoulder, and then we will be moving our RV up to Santa Clara to work on our vacant rental house there. It looks like we will have to put the pedal to the metal to get up to our camp hosting summer job in Washington state by May 25. Thank goodness Elaine's daughter, Tarra, can finish things up for us with the house and install a new renter once we have cleaned the place up.
I am happy to report that both Elaine and I are well and enjoying this vacation. Jerry, Lori, Mitch and Maddie are also doing great and hopefully, are enjoying our visit, even though they are also getting ready to be moved back to the USA in 37 days. We will be posting some pictures from this trip as soon as we get back to our own computer and download them from our camera. Adios Amigos.