Attaining the age of seventy is a once-in-a-lifetime milestone, deserving the revelation of (hopefully) wise realizations not possible for the young of limited age and experience. The fact is, that I don’t feel so old, though it’s questionable whether seventy still qualifies as “middle age.”[…]
I write this blog with the Ukraine war present as a disturbing cloud on the mood of our pleasant cruise. As I mentioned in my previous blog, the cruise schedule is very busy in the upcoming weeks in the Mediterranean. In fact, we will be in port on seven consecutive days, including two days (and one night) in Venice. So my upcoming blogs will combine several ports, with as many photos as the ship’s internet will enable.
After a long transit from Reno via Los Angeles to Tokyo, we boarded the Viking Orion and enjoyed our first excursion in Japan.
Our recent Viking River Cruise was a quick visit to five countries in six days, including Bulgaria, Serbia, and Croatia, as well as the embarkation and disembarkation cities, Bucharest, Romania, and Budapest, Hungary. In each port, we would load onto buses and be shown the city or the countryside. Such a compressed trip can turn into a blur when trying to remember the details. This blog will be an attempt to summarize my most vivid memories. . .
Our recent trip to Georgia and Alabama was our first occasion to travel since Susan and I arrived back from Israel, Jordan, India, Dubai, and Nashville on March 5, 2020. Society, including our company, Healing Healthcare Systems, shut down totally at the end of that week...
Last week, Susan and I attended a one-day regional conference in San Francisco, hosted by the University of San Francisco Medical Center in their brand-new facility, which just opened this past February. More about the conference in a minute…But first, what’s wrong with American healthcare?
This week marks my second visit to Venice. The first was in 2004. My opinion remains unchanged: Venice is one of the most interesting cities on the planet.
Our Viking China cruise continued to three port cities I had never heard of before. The Chinese government seeks to increase tourism, and our cruise is one of the first collaborations with the Chinese government and Viking Cruises. The ship's staff is 100% Chinese, and the entertainers are all Chinese. So this particular cruise is different from the usual Viking multi-national staff.
Our ship, the Yi Dun, is named after the first Chinese commercial ship launched in 1872, the Yi Dun.
Four years ago, Susan and I toured Jordan for the first time. Through the internet, I hired a driver/tour guide based on an ad from a Jordan tour company. This driver, Mazen, met us at the airport holding a sign with our names on it. Spending hours together with him in the car that first year, we became close friends with Mazen. We have hired him as our tour guide during our three subsequent Jordan visits. Mazen has invited us to his house twice for dinner with him and his wife. Both he and his wife speak enough English to get to know each other well enough to cement our friendship. . .