Permission to dream again

The celebrations continue as the news spreads of my good(?) health. You can almost hear a palpable sigh of relief among our friends. I suspect we’re not the only ones who have felt the strain of the recent months.

We meanwhile are turning our thoughts to holidays. We’re contemplating a cruise from Monaco to Barcelona. As we dream we put on a CD of Georges Brassens. He comes from Sète, one of the ports of call of this cruise. Sète even has a museum to Georges Brassens. (I always think of him as the French Jake Thackeray.)

It’s a cruise I’ve had my eye on for a while, mainly because most of the ports are places we’ve fancied visiting at some time, with a little bit of Majorca & Spain, which we’re not so immediately attracted to. Barcelona looks fascinating but elsewhere in Spain we’re not so sure about. Maybe it’s just the image of Little of England in the sun & the Costas full of lager louts which puts us off. The reality may appeal much more.

The last time we went on a sea-going cruise we didn’t greatly enjoy it. It had its highlights.

The Hubbard Glacier & multi-coloured icebergs

The Hubbard Glacier was fabulous. Our friends have enthused so much about cruising we thought we ought to consider another try. We definitely think if we do, we want to try a smaller ship (we felt crushed under the number of people on board the other trip) & in warm waters (the only other times we really enjoyed the cruise were on the balmy evenings as we left & returned to port at Vancouver, when the rest of the holidaymakers could be comfortably avoided). This cruise fulfils both conditions. We thought we might extend the holiday with a few days at each end to discover Monaco & Barcelona, neither of which we’ve ever visited.

It’s good just to be able to feel some excitement about the possibility of going away. We’ve not finally decided, & certainly not booked yet, though we have ascertained there are still some wheelchair accessible cabins available. With my health having been so uncertain for so long it’s been difficult to feel much excitement, or energy for that matter, about such frivolities as holidays. Now we feel we’ve been given the okay to get excited once more, to dream again & it’s wonderful.