GETTING HOME

Thursday, 19 May. Undoubtedly due to the ultramodern electronic controls in our motel room, the television came on by itself at 3:00 a.m. and woke us up. But we had no trouble going back to sleep. We got up at 6:40, dressed, and went to the breakfast room. The breakfast was very nice, and we each had two caffe lattes with it. We packed and caught the complimentary 8:00 airport shuttle. We were at the gate before 9:00 for our 11:10 United flight.

We boarded at 10:30 and the plane pulled back right on schedule. We were in the air at 11:35. After lunch was served at 1:30 (7:30 a.m. EDT), we watched the movie "Red." I just had a little to go reading "War and Peace" on my Kindle and finally finished that. I hadn't realized that Tolstoy was such a philosopher.

A light snack was served at 1:45 p.m. EDT. The plane landed at Washington Dulles Airport at 3:00 and we were through immigration and customs about 4:00. Our son Joseph was there with our car to meet us. Traffic was surprisingly light for that time of day, and we were at his house in Culpeper about 5:45. We stayed there for dinner and got home to Massanutten a little after 9:00.

Observations. This was our second trans-Atlantic repositioning cruise and out third cruise with Holland America. At our stage of life, the several days at sea without ports-of-call are very enjoyable. Then in the half dozen days in port, we can go off on our own or take easy excursions to suit ourselves. We've already seen so much of the world that we don't feel the need to be spending our days seeking new discoveries. As usual, we'd been to more than half the ports before.

The cost of the repositioning cruises is quite reasonable. This time we paid Holland America a little more for a veranda room. Of course, insurance, taxes, port fees, tips, and excursions ran the total cost up substantially. One way air fares back to the U.S. are ridiculously expensive, too. But we used frequent flyer miles this time and avoided that cost.

As for Holland America, they treated us very well this time. Of the two previous cruises we took with them, one was our best ocean cruise ever, and the other was our worst. We had fixed seating for dinner this time, which we prefer. The few times we did go to open seating in the dining room, the service was noticeably inferior.

The ports-of-call were a good match for us. We'd never been to Almeria or Valencia before. We'd been to Cadiz very briefly once before. We'd been to Barcelona three times before but had never done a "Gaudi tour" there as we did this time. We'd also been to Monaco for a few days and explored the Cote d'Azur extensively, but we hadn't seen St. Paul de Vence where our excursion took us.

Of course, the frosting on the cake was our five-day stay in Sorrento, which we'd last seen in 1962. Staying there, we didn't feel overwhelmed by other tourists, although they were many. Our visits to Positano and Capri, on the other hand, were very hectic. In retrospect, I hadn't prepared adequately for those visits, especially to Capri. I had expected to find ample information in Sorrento about those places and was surprised that there was practically none. When we first made our ship and plane reservations, we had decided to stay a few days in Italy, but we hadn't decided where we would go, so our travel arrangements were not as efficient as they could have been.

Nevertheless, Sorrento was a great choice. For us, and especially for Jane, it was truly Torna a Surriento, bringing back fond memories of our time in Italy so long ago.