LL & I had booked a cruise for the spring of 2020. Yes, 2020 – you can imagine what happened then. After three postponements leading to a significant ship credit each, we decided on a cruise from Venice to Athens with Viking. Organizing this was entertaining (for me), demanding (for LL), and frustrating (for both), as it seems I can’t manage my Viking account using the viking.co.uk site and can’t access viking.com account from Scotland. So LL was constantly on the North American website pretending she was me, or on the phone explaining why the Viking service rep couldn’t talk to me directly. Such fun (for me).
My lovely young cousin volunteered to take Scout while I was away, and as she lives less than 10 miles from Gatwick, this was a perfect solution. Scout seemed delighted with her new home, and I headed off to a hotel (that I think was designed by the same company that makes Japanese capsule hotels) in Gatwick in order to make my 5:00 a.m. flight to Venice.
I gotta say, flying out of Gatwick with EasyJet is easy (hence the name) and cheap. My ticket was one-tenth (ONE-TENTH) the price of LL’s. Granted, she was coming from Toronto, but still – ONE-TENTH! Orkney to Gatwick is also ten times more than a Gatwick-Venice flight. No wonder Brits are holidaying in Majorca and not Orkney. And, to be fair, the average temperature in Majorca is slightly higher than in Orkney. But, wow, what a price difference.
It was great to see LL again, and after saying hello, partially unpacking, and a quick clean-up, we did the obvious – headed to the ship’s fancy tasting-menu restaurant for an elegant five course dinner. Plus wine. As the ship sailed out of the harbour, we toasted the beginning of another exciting trip.
*Normally I backdate posts like this, so they’ll align with days of the actual trip, but I’ve let it go so long that it hardly seems worth it. I’ll just add a correct date at the bottom of each post, for my own future reference.
5 October, 2023