We’ve now been home for two days. The flights were on time and completely without incident. We drove home from the Salt Lake airport and were in bed by about 9:30 p.m. And, of course, we were up and wide awake by 3:30 a.m. Making the transition is difficult this time, complicated by the fact that I’ve come down with a cold. The last day in Amsterdam I was feeling kind of lousy. By the time we were on the airplane, the cold has set in and isn’t yet showing any signs of going away. We had a great time on the cruise and, in addition to being a good vacation, it was very educational. We’ll definitely do another river cruise in the next few years. I’d like to do one in China and one in France. Neither will happen next year, however, as we’re already committed to a Mediterranean cruise next October.

In a two week cruise it is possible to get to know a few of the crew onboard the ship a little bit. Our cruise director Carin was just delightful. She hails from the Netherlands and kept us right up to date on everything that was happening. She is definitely one of the better cruise directors that we’ve known. The dining room staff was also very competent. The dining room was open seating, but we generally sat at table 16 so we would have the same waiter. He was a great young man with good work ethic. We really enjoyed getting to know him a little bit. Our good friends from Colorado Springs, Duane and Bobby, were great fun. Traveling with good friends on a trip like this is a special treat. Bobby was having trouble with her foot which she solved by cutting a hole out of the side of a pair of tennis shoes so the little toe could stick out. She had no more problems the rest of the trip — just a kind of a funny looking shoe.

All was well at home — all the computers were running but the firewall was blocked for some reason. Turning it off and back on cleared the problem. I’ll need to figure out some way of being able to do that remotely. It was quite frustrating having the weblog unavailable for the entire trip. Bradica (the dog) fared well in the kennel and seems to be quite happy to be back home. There was plenty of work waiting for me at the office. The vacation is now over and it almost seems like a distant dream. Retirement sometimes begins to look very enticing. All I need to do is save enough money to afford to retire!