CPT Trips

We really enjoyed the Musee d’Orsay. Beautiful art in an interesting setting, a converted railroad station. Also Monet’s Water Lilies at Musee de l’Orangerie pairs nicely with Giverney.

You definitely need a good TA and get them to put a hold on a certain number of cabins in a few categories. What, in addition to the cruise line comps will the TA give you? Ours tossed in a welcome cocktail hour, handled everyone’s registration (that was a real benefit with so many cruise rookies), printed and distributing final docs and arranged to have us sitting at adjacent tables You definitely want to have people book through the TA . . . chasing final payment is no fun. Find out the cruise line’s group benefits . . . How many cabins to get a comped fare? How is the level of the comp fare determined. What else will they do for you? We had a farewell cocktail hour on the cruise line. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that almost all of us were on one of the beverage packages.

This is the tourism police officer we had as an escort during our several day stay in Cairo. He was with us every time we left the hotel as a group. His weapon was not exactly inconspicuous 😉. I think he just had an off the rack suit jacket as the weapon was pretty obvious from the side and the back. I got this as a shot from the hip as he was taking a group shot, the Pyramids are behind me. We also had similar tourism police escorts in Luxor and Aswan.

Not grateful enough to keep Biebs. 😉

I only read print books. No a brag, just a fact. I used an e-reader a couple times and just didn’t like it, it didn’t fit my reading style and I sometimes “fat fingered” it. DD claims it is because I’m a Luddite.

Not to put too fine a point on it, weather and climate are different. May we discuss why one particular state in in neither of the two National power grids? 😉

I’ve traveled internationally many times with a company that does “home hosted visits” with local families. More often than not, on of the Americans gets to that very question. The most memorable of these visits was in the spring of ‘09 in the Netherlands. Midway through the visit, and after finding out the price of a small attach house, the host asked, “so, who did you vote for.”

Yeah, but they would have electricity when it’s cold.

You might want to check Grand Circle. Some (maybe all) of their river and small ships have bikes.

In our travels I have found that people from other countries with an interest in US government and politics have a much better grasp of the subject than most of my neighbors.

No, it’s bigger than that. Do a search on “satanic conspiracy taylor and chiefs” (although I don’t know whether your location will skew the results.

Waiting for the Canadians to respond. Sorry. 😞

And many politicians and commentators that see a “Satanic conspiracy” in the Chiefs win . . .

We could spice it up and discuss the Ashes and the Cricket World Cup.

As did every place we stopped on the road to Butrint. Looks like you got a photo of a fat one.

The remains of Hoxha’s coastal defense system and the story behind them was fascinating.

That’s a dead giveaway. If you include Travis in the topic you can melt a lot of snowflakes.

The city itself isn’t much, at least when we visited 10 years ago. That said, it was a worthwhile port visit because we went to Butrint. Our cruise was in October/November so less crowded and it was a small, 50 pax, ship. We had overnights in Kotor and Split as well as a late arrival to Dubrovnik that provided opportunities to tour during off hours without the crowds. The sail-in at Kotor is spectacular.

Wow, thats some challenge - separating religion from theology and politics from government.

New format sucks!!!

I opt for waterproof rather than water resistant for staying dry and also waterproof over pants. The served me well in really messy conditions, cold, windy, and near horizontal rain. “You can never get so wet that you won’t dry out, but dress to stay dry,” Gudrun, trip leader in Baltics.

We had lunch at a restaurant in Belgrade, “?”, that had a separate room for non-Serbian speakers. Although multilingual menus were provided, the waiters spoke English to everyone and there was a surprising amount of table to table conversation.

Yep

Quebec May be the only political subdivision that prohibits KFC. Don’t forget Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung.

Yep! I saw this guy in the Bayonne terminal.