Driving Miss Daisy

Ted. After Judy published her most recent post, we heard a few questions from folks inquiring as to whether or not we were still planning to take our three month trip to Europe. Well, that would be a big YES! 

We considered the pros and cons and concluded, what the heck. Sure, there will be a few adjustments to make but it will be worth it. Her back pain is not gone but it is definitely reduced so, with the addition of her transport chair, Ruby, we hopped on a shuttle from Athens to the Atlanta yesterday morning at 8:30 am bound for Newark, New Jersey. From there, we would board a ship on Sunday for a cruise across the North Atlantic. 

Our first clue that this would not be a normal day occurred when our United Airlines flight from Atlanta to Newark was cancelled about an hour before boarding. Using the app we were able to find a couple of seats on another flight leaving an hour later. This allowed us to have a relaxing lunch near the gate. 

Once in the air, we learned that the Newark airport was closed due to severe thunderstorms. We circle Rochester, New York (right?) for a couple of hours and then finally landed…in Cleveland, Ohio! Yeah, it’s nowhere near Newark but apparently that was the best place to explore options to travel on to Newark. 

It did work out because United gassed up our plane and found a new crew and we took off again towards Newark (which was still closed). Yes, we did eventually end up there last night and after finding our luggage (another miracle) straggled into our hotel around 11:00 at night. It had been a long day but Judy held up great! Me? I was a bit frazzled. 

We are now enjoying a relaxing morning at our hotel and listening to horror stories from other travelers. Hundreds of people are still stuck and the hotels are packed. We often read about 1,000’s of flights being cancelled because of weather, strikes, global outages, etc but have never actually experienced it. That’s amazing considering how much flying we do. 

In a couple of hours we will Uber down to the Cape Liberty Cruise Port to board the Celebrity Eclipse for a 12 night cruise to Reykjavik, Iceland. 

Our route

After our cruise ends, we plan to remain in Iceland for a couple days and then travel to Denmark, Sweden, Belgium and France before returning to Athens, Georgia on November 1. 

Will we have more hiccups along the way? Possibly. Will Judy have uncomfortable days? Maybe. Will we see incredible sights, meet long time friends and family and make wonderful new acquaintances? Keep reading and find out. Meanwhile, I’ll just keep driving Miss Daisy!