Worldwide Wanderers

My first international trip to London -- March 14, 1996   My aunt took me to London for my first international trip and only my second flight. I was a sophomore in jr. college and had to finish all my assignments and tests before leaving. Then, woohoo, we were off. My 19 year old self blogging in a travel journal that I have now typed. My aunt worked at the jr. college, and the trip was organized by a teacher there with flights, hotel, transfers, Tube/Underground pass, and one group dinner. Other than that, we were free to explore as we wished. He was the Speech and Theater teacher, so he took a group to get a trip where he spent most of his time in the 1/2 ticket line or at a theater show. He was willing to look for and get 1/2 tickets for others. So, we are off into the past and across the pond... March 14-15, 1996 As we boarded the aircraft, adrenaline raced through my body because I knew that 8.5 hours later we would be in England. We were on a night flight, so it seemed so strange

We are luckily enough to live in a totality band for the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse. We had just over a minute of totality in our location. It did get dark, like dusk, and the crickets started chirping. It was SO AWESOME! I'm ready for the next. I looked up when it will be...not too soon. We loved this one! Table of Contents

Last day in NYC -- March 18, 2024   We walked across the Queensboro Bridge (like in the show King of Queens theme song) and over Roosevelt Island. We saw the Roosevelt Island tram going across.  We arrived at the UN. Joel did the Model UN club in high school. They let people in as tours but did not have any walk up tickets available this day. I should have planned better but did not even know that normal people could go in. The first pictures are the garden, which we could not go into either. It seems like they could let people walk around the garden without a security concern.   We met one of my previous co-workers for lunch at the NYC office and visited the red balloon animal dog. We planned to go to a Mexican place, but after walking there, it was not open. So, we went to the McSorley's Old Ale House, established in 1854. Travis was the only one allowed a beer (since he was not working, and I don't like beer); they had two types: light or dark. A beer order was actually two

Disembarkation and NYC -- March 17, 2024   We set the alarm for 5:30 am. Travis woke up at 5:15 am and got to see the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge lit up in the dark. Pictures of the approach from our room.   We had buffet breakfast (no hot chocolate in the buffet when normally other cruise lines do) and were ready to walk off about 7:30 am. We had to be out of our cabins by 7:30 am too. They called walk off about 7am and had published 7:30 am. Our room steward confirmed that four luggage tags was enough; I said perfect but that were were going to walk off with luggage. The luggage tags were innovative and a little dorky at the same time. They had an extra circle sticker to pull off and put on your shirt or jacket. Then, in the terminal, they could quickly direct people to their luggage area. Disembarkation was pretty fast; more disembarkation details in my summarized review .  We did not catch the bus this time, but walked about 25 minutes to a subway station. We rode to our hotel, the F