Blame It on Rio, or . . .

. . . perhaps Pyrat’s of the Caribbean. Or maybe even Sex on the Beach.  Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

As you read this, Ursula and I should be packing for our latest journey. We depart Saturday morning for Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, whereupon we face a four-hour layover.  After swimming upstream against a raging river of humanity cascading toward us as we slowly but inexorably make our way toward our gate, we’ll be boarding a flight for Rio de Janeiro to attend Carnival.  And you know what that means.  It’s PARTY TIME, BaaayyyBeee!

After we regain consciousness (I figure we’ll come to sometime around midday Wednesday), we will put back on our clothes, if we can find them, and make our way for the Star Princess for yet one more night in Rio de Janeiro.  At least for that night we’ll be off the streets and out of the gutter.  Just kidding.  We really have a hotel for the other three nights.  Whether we’ll be in any condition to find it is another matter entirely.

From Rio we’ll be cruising our way up the coast of Brazil, stopping in Salvador after a day at sea.  Two more days at sea puts us in Fortaleza.  After that we leave Brazil behind us and head for the Caribbean.

We have three days at sea following our departure from Fortaleza, after which we arrive at one of my all-time favorite destinations, Barbados.  Time to stock up on bottles of Mount Gay Extra Old Rum, assuming we’ve recovered from the Rio party by then.  The next two days will see us prowling first Antigua and then St. Thomas.

After St. Thomas it’s two more days at sea before reaching our final cruise destination of Fort Lauderdale.  We’ll be staying there for one night so that we can spend some time with our youngest daughter, our son-in-law, and our three grandchildren (we have four more of those stashed away somewhere in Virginia, by the way, as well as another daughter and son-in-law).

Days at sea mean writing, bridge (the game, not the structure), reading (thank goodness for Kindle), dining, wining, whining about the price of wining, movies, maybe a little Texas Hold ‘Em, followed by more whining about wining, visits to the art auction where the wine flows both free and freely with no whining, ending up with an art purchase bill that brings about a whole lot more whining, only this time not about the wine.  It’s enough to make one see red . . . red wine, that is.  But at least on Princess I know we won’t be whining about the dining.

At any rate, I may not be able to keep up my thrice weekly updates.  If I can, I will try to give a running travelogue of our adventures and hopefully be able to post a picture or two.

But if you’re looking for something good to read in the meantime, you really need to check out that great little mystery novel Decisions (available for both Kindle and Nook) by some hack writer named R. Doug Wicker.  Think of it as a charitable donation.  Trust me, after this trip he’ll definitely need the money.