Mother's visit stories

I finally had a visitor make it all the way over to see us and we have been having fun traveling all over Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean and the lucky visitor is: MY MOM!! Our first trip was to Poland where we were able to find some beautiful pieces and return safely without going too crazy with the pottery.

Then before our cruise ship would leave on Saturday, I knew I wanted to show my mom Salzburg and the places filmed in "The Sound of Music"... only this time I would be the tour guide. The city was gorgeous, but unfortunatley the fountains in the city were covered for the winter. It turned out to be a beautiful day, plenty of sunshine and it was easy to get around as long as I had my trusty GPS to show us the way. The most memorable moments happened while taking the public buses into town the first night we arrived. We found the right bus, only it was going the wrong way! A simple 10 minute ride now took 45 minutes! And wouldn't you know the same thing happened to us as we were trying to make our way back to the hotel for the night. This time we REALLY took a detour way out of town, Cael was really concerned we were never going to make it back alive. The bus eventually stopped at the last stop where I inquired of the driver whether we were on the right route or not. He recognized our hotel name (when I showed him a card with the logo on it) and soon we were on our way. We were all very hungry and succumbed to the golden arches to put a smile back on the boys faces.

Then our cruise ship adventure began. However, it did not start off on the right foot. The boarding procedures the day we departed could be described as complete CHAOS. Long, painful lines that merged together in a jumbled mess. Crowds of people jammed together trying to go up a single escalator. More lines, more waiting, hungry children, and stress. I think our boarding took 2 1/2 hours, with most of that time just standing with a mass of people. Apparantly this was not what our friends had experienced, so I am chalking it up to a "bad day" on the boarding dock. Thankfully the rest of the trip was a whole lot better than our first couple of hours. Especially all the food, the whirlwind tours wherever we landed, and we could never forget the race back to the ship because we were running behind schedule. Such an amazing trip I'm sure I will never forget.