Well the reason I started this blog is now a short 5 days away - our trip to London, and then our cruise to France, Spain and Portugal.

It's Sunday night and we leave this coming Friday night and believe it or not we packed our suitcases today. Yes, we are being quite organized.  And a good thing because after we packed them we weighed them and Ed's is 9 lbs. overweight and mine is 4 lbs. overweight.  Overweight meaning they weigh more than the allowable 50 lbs.

It seems that our first piece of luggage is free as long as it's 50 lbs. or under.  Sounds like we could do that but the suitcase weighs 14 lbs. to start - what can I say - it's a large suitcase, but we were each only taking one - so it should work....hmmmm....doesn't seem to be working.

So I re-read the baggage policy (exciting stuff on a Sunday afternoon) and here's the conundrum...if we go over the weight - we will pay $100 for each piece of luggage.  So it goes from FREE to $100 - Yikes!  If we bring them both down to 50 lbs or less and bring a third suitcase - we pay $70 for that suitcase.  So I guess it's a no-brainer.

We have now brought up a 3rd suitcase from the basement. We will reconfigure, repack and re-weigh to hopefully find we now are taking 3 bags all under 50 lbs.  I guess the good news is we'll have more room for all those purchases we'll make when we are abroad.  Hey.....you just might get a gift from us when we return:-)

Here's the itinerary...London, England for Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning...

Then Southampton, England on Monday, October 1st where we board the Celebrity Constellation for a 12-night Wine Immersion Cruise.  We will cruise to Le Havre, France (2 full days), Full day at sea; Bordeaux, France (2 full days); Bilbao, Spain (2 full days); Vigo, Spain, and Portos, Portugal; followed by 2 days at sea on our way back to Southampton.

We have lots of excursions planned and will do most of our blogging from the ship.  So stay tuned....

Yes we are getting excited - at this point I think we are excited just to get away from the every day. Life is hectic and we so look forward to turning off and checking out....

Once we arrive we will turn on and check in to our new life - okay our new temporary life for 15 days....oh well -we'll take it.

Next blog......from Europe!

Betsy