July 2022 – pre vacation

They say the longer you anticipate a vacation, the more psychological benefits the vacation affords you. I believe this. Vacation planning, dreaming, fantasizing, and reading are life’s big luxuries distracting us from the day-to-day oppression – a bit too dramatic? Despite believing this, we aren’t big vacation planners. Now that Chris and I aren’t working full time, we seem to lack motivation to book or plan a vacation far in the future. When life wasn’t one big vacation, and our vacation were dictated by our jobs, we seemed to have things planned a bit more. Certainly not more than a year out, but we wouldn’t be planning a summer cruise 6 weeks before.

The just over 2-week journey, planned a mere 6 weeks ago, is the first time since Covid that we’ve been to Europe. We’re spending a couple of days in Barcelona, before getting on a 10 cruise. We always get into a city at least a day prior to a cruise…just in case flights go haywire and when travelling this far, getting over jet lag prior to the cruise. We’ll finish up with 4 days back in Barcelona.

Most of these 18 days will be spent in Spain (including the Canary Islands) with a day in Morocco and 2 in Lisbon. I’m always happy to revisit places we’ve been in before, but this cruise has only one port we have been to before.