Back in December my wife had a work conference in New Orleans. She had previously visited for work and had a great time. I had never been so figured this would be a fun little trip for us. I flew down a few days after she did and arrived in the late afternoon after making a connecting flight through Salt Lake City.
I caught a cab into the French Quarter to our hotel, Hyatt Centric French Quarter. After getting squared away in the hotel room, we met up with my wife’s coworker for some drinks and grub
So, somehow my entire post did not save and I lost a fully completed post. I’ll re-write it but suspect it won’t be close to the same. In my frustration, I may also shorten it and just throw in a bunch of pictures.
My parents wanted to take D and I on a vacation this year and we eventually settled on a cruise to Iceland. My parents are world travelers and we wanted to find somewhere they haven’t been so the options of places that we wanted to see and they haven’t been were limited. My parents are also pretty big cruiser takers and they suggested a 2 week cruise. I have had some experience with cruises, having been on 6 different ones to various places (Alaska, Hawaii, Caribbean, Mexico) and various cruise lines (Carnival, Princess, NCL). All the previous cruises I’ve been on were 7 days or less so a 2 week cruise was new to me. Also we would be cruising with Holland America, which is known for an older demographic (think retirees). D had never been on a cruise so this was going to be her first experience.
Our itinerary would start in Amsterdam and take us to Scotland (2 ports), Iceland (3 ports) and Norway (2 ports) before returning to Amsterdam. We decided to stay a few extra days in Amsterdam since D hadn’t been there before either. To not be too rushed/stressed about making sure we arrived in time to board the boat, we decided to head to the Netherlands a day early. We had one connecting stop in Seattle and I managed to get a decent shot of Mt. Rainier (I think it was Mt. Rainier).
Our flight from Seattle to Amsterdam was smooth enough though I was stuck in a middle economy seat so wasn’t the most comfortable. I was glad they had individual monitors and I was able to watch a bunch of movies since I couldn’t sleep that well. On arrival, my mom surprised us by actually waiting outside of customs and accompanying us to our hotel for the night (Hyatt Place Airport – actually in a nearby town called Hoofdorp). After getting checked in and taking a quick nap, we walked over to Hoofdorp to get some dinner. We managed to find a Chinese restaurant (which is a cuisine I know my parents are comfortable with and I figured that we wouldn’t have much opportunity for Chinese food while on the cruise).
The walk through town also revealed a quaint little main street area with shops and restaurants. The houses were also quite cute.
StewsCat 