Countdown To Cruising

We put our bedroom remodeling on hold until the end of July. We worked in the yard during a couple of days when it wasn't raining and hauled five large garbage bags of weeds to the dump.

We've gotten a fairly good idea of what we're packing for this trip and we'll fine-tune that over the next couple of days.

Two more sleeps and we drive to Vancouver.

We overnight at the Westin Wall Centre July 1 and start our flying July 2 on US Airways, a first for us (and, yes, in First):

8:15 US544 YVR to PHX
3:15p US16 PHX to JFK
3:15p US16 PHX to JFK

We overnight at JFK at the Sheraton JFK Airport Hotel and fly United onward (in Business Class) July 3:

11:16 UA5712 JFK to IAD
2:49p UA950 IAD to BRU

We celebrate the Fourth of July by flying Lufthansa (in Economy Class):

2:10 LH2285 BRU to MUC
4:15 LH1912 MUC to VCE

We've already bought tickets for a boat that will take us from the Venice Airport directly to the Hilton Molino Stucky, where we have a stay booked on points.

We overlooked the fact that we can board our ship the day before we sail out of Venice, so we'll have a total of four nights in Venice. That's more than we would have planned but we'll make leisurely days out of it and should be well rested by the time we cruise.

A circuitous route, including plane transfers in Phoenix, Brussels, and Munich, but it's well worth it to snag good seats most of the way, and also worth breaking up that routing with a couple of bargain overnight stops along the way.

We're getting jet-lagged just typing this so it's time to stop.