Hello, it’s me. Long time no write… well, what can I say? My hat is off to anyone who blogs regularly. That said, here I am! Actually, I got the renewal notice for my website. Oh snap! I’ve got a blog. Just kidding. I think of it everyday. While I have not been blogging with any frequency at all, I have also not been idle. I’m a teacher. I’m never without things to do. I’ve been places, too.
Shortly after I returned from Florence, my family and I spent a week on Pensacola Beach. Pensacola is my favorite beach on the Florida panhandle, and I try to make it there each summer. This trip was special because we were there for Blue Angels Week. In all my years of coming to Pensacola, I had never seen the Blue Angels beach show. I’ve been to the National Naval Aviation Museum and seen practices, but nothing prepared me for the spectacle and sheer magnitude of this show. We had prime (read: outrageously expensive) viewing from our Beach Club condo. Holy. Goodness. I’m a big Blues fan, but I’ve never experienced anything close to this! If you are even remotely a fan of the Blues or of airshows, I highly recommend doing this at least once. Crazy town!
After the beach trip, I was lazy for the rest of summer 2018. By lazy, I mean I prepped my classes for the fall semester in between binge sessions with Netflix and Hulu (who knew The Good Wife was so good? Me, after watching all 7 seasons in a few weekends). I’m not much of a traveler (or even human) in late summer anyway. I become sluggish in our Southern heat and humidity. I melt the first weeks of school in August. It’s disgusting.
Fast forward to December and the end of fall semester, I hit the submit button on final grades and the high seas. Okay, I hit the Gulf of Mexico. I went on a seven-day Western Caribbean cruise out of New Orleans on Norwegian Breakaway. I’m not really a cruiser, especially to Mexico and tropical locations, where I think flying and staying at a swanky resort with umbrellas in drinks is the best option. I’ve cruised Alaska and the Mediterranean which were both gorgeous, and I’d do either again in a heartbeat!
This cruise was still a lot of fun, and it was a great deal I couldn’t pass up, so off we went. The ship itself is huge but beautiful, and the cabins are quite nice. There are something like 15 dining options with the same number of bars. The high points were the Rebellious Fish and Bloody Maria drinks (hi Sandy from Memphis!), the chicken wings at O’Sheehan’s Bar & Grill, and the port Harvest Caye, Belize. That port was adorable and vendors sold products from the Women’s Argo-Processing Association (WAPA) and these cute, tiny, woven turtle boxes. The island is cruise-ship owned, so it was not the real Belize, but I enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, leaving Costa Maya, Mexico, on the return trip was a bit rough. That sealed the deal on not cruising for a while. It made paying all of that money for Scopolamine patches worth it for sure. I slapped one of those suckers on when I was at the edge of death, and within 30 minutes I was perfectly fine. We all survived.
That is what I’ve been up to besides teaching, grading, designing courses, obsessing over the new Bohemian Rhapsody movie (has any movie ever been better cast?), drinking a lot of Italian wine, cyber stalking the cast of A Million Little Things (where did that masterpiece come from? Move over This is Us), and planning the next big adventure. That’s the real reason I’m back on the blog. I’m traveling overseas again very soon. There are two big bucket list trips on the horizon and another one in the planning stages. Up next is Berlin over spring break. Then it’s Vietnam in May. Paris and Normandy are in the early stages of planning. All solo! I’m hooked after going solo in Florence.
Stay tuned.
tiffany travels 