It was a very good year!
- Ruth Mcbride
- 59 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Today starts another big adventure! We have been planning this 5+ week vacation for over 2 years and we are finally going to embark on another trip of a lifetime! 2026 is the “Year of Ruth” as Richard is calling it. I turn 65 this month on March 20th and I wanted to be somewhere special for my BIG BIRTHDAY! One of the places I have always wanted to visit happens to be where we will be on my Birthday!
Our adventure begins from Tampa, Florida where we have spent the winter of 2025/2026 enjoying golf, playing Bunco and Mahjong at our club Lone Palm Golf Club with our Florida friends. Richard has spent a lot of the time I’ve been down South away working in faraway places like Antigua, Whistler, Toronto and Puerto Rico.
Richard is finally glad to be going on a trip where he doesn’t have to: get up at the crack of dawn to do the departures, take yet another Uber or taxi trip to the airport, and doesn’t have to get by with doing his laundry in the shower and trying to figure out where his next meal is coming from!
We have 2 cruises booked and in between a week on our own in Europe.
The Mediterranean Cruise on Viking Vesta: Malta Morocco and the Mediterranean
We board the Viking Vesta on Friday March 13th for a 16 day cruise of the Mediterranean. We are looking forward to another Viking Ocean Cruise as the last Viking Ocean Cruise we did was the first Viking Ocean Cruise - our 2022/2023 Viking World Cruise.
Paris in the Spring:
We wanted to stay somewhere in Europe after our Viking Ocean Cruise on the Mediterranean and kept looking at where we should go after we disembarked in Barcelona. Our favourite city to visit in the world is Paris, France, so of course we have to choose Paris to spend a week in between our two cruises. Ah! Paris in the Spring!!!
Exploring Egypt on the Viking Amun:
For our second cruise, we fly to Cairo, Egypt after our week exploring Paris, France and then meet up with our Viking representatives and guests for some land touring in Cairo, before we fly to our cruise on the Nile.
I’m sure you are saying to yourselves “EYGPT?” There is a war going on in the Middle East and US and Israeli forces are attacking Iran at the present time. Well we booked this 2 years ago and Viking is still running this Pharoahs and Pyramids cruise at the present time based on all of their top security advisors advice. We will take guidance from Viking and of course will do only excursions through Viking for this portion of our cruise. If Viking chooses to cancel our April cruise on the Nile we would probably end our trip early and fly home from Paris to Toronto to Tampa on whatever route our travel agent could secure for us. Fingers crossed and we don’t know the future, so we will have to wait to see how this turns out.
Given we have 3 separate legs of this trip planned and 3 different climates to pack for, it’s been a heck of a time trying to plan for packing. I’m sure I’ve overpacked again but if we want to purchase anything we are flying Business Class and can purchase another suitcase for our treasures we might pick up along the way!
We have 12 separate flights booked for this trip. That is a lot of flying in 5+ weeks, but it is what it is and to get where we need to go, we need to make those flights!
I will try to blog most days on our travels so follow along on our adventure for the next 5+ weeks!
1961….it was a very good year! And so will 2026!
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