Galleries

As Susan and I begin the final week of our India visit, in this blog I want to try and describe our day-to-day life during our six weeks here.  We have had such a wonderful time, that we hope to return again at the end of this year.  We played more concerts in our six weeks here than we have in the past year at home in Reno.  The positive audience reception of our Indian audiences was very gratifying.

This two-week tour of Turkey was managed by Go Ahead Vacations, a Boston-based tour company.  Susan and I had traveled using their services once before, to Italy in 2006.  We decided that for a country like Turkey, with which we were completely unfamiliar, that going with an organized tour was the best way to see the most sights in a short time without having to worry about managing any of the details ourselves. . .

We have been very blessed to be hosted on this trip by our dear friend Lajo Gupta, first at her home in Dubai, and afterwards in Mumbai, where she flew to host us in her wonderful apartment there. I met Lajo forty years ago(!)

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.

Ireland had always been on my “bucket list.”  So I’m ecstatic to have gotten the opportunity to visit, even without long prior planning. 

I had visited Switzerland only once before in 1973, driving my VW van with my parents, when they came to Europe to persuade me to come back to the US after I had stayed out of the country for three years. By that time. . .