November 2021 was our 30th wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we’d booked our first cruise with Viking, exploring Scandinavia.

Then we got the blasted pandemic.

September 2023 I turned 60, more reason to celebrate. So, as the planets aligned, we took that cruise. We boarded at Bergen, Norway cruised to Eidfjord, Stavanger, and Oslo. Aalborg and Copenhagen, Denmark. Berlin, Germany. Bornholm, Denmark. Gdansk, Poland and finally Sweden, where we disembarked in Stockholm.

We loved all these places. Bergen was fantastic. Copenhagen stunning. We learned a lot about Norway and the oil industry at Stavanger. Oslo is also a beautiful city.

And icing on the cake was catching up with friends in Aalborg, who collected us from port and took us to their home for friendship and lunch, and to visit a local farmer (heaven for my husband). Lissi and Henning are so lovely. We met them in 1997 at an international farming conference, Eric met them again in the 2000s in the Netherlands, Henning came to Perth for another IFMA conference, and contact continued via Facebook 😁

I began this post from Gdansk, Poland. I’m a writer who spent six weeks overseas in 2023 (Ireland, Scandinavia and Santorini) and didn’t write. Months passed in 2023 without that rhythm. I anticipated that holidaying would reignite the joy; downtime, freed from the real world, with happy things to write about. But it didn’t make a difference, which is why I’m writing about mid-2023 travel in December.

I’ve enjoyed doing #nycmidnight and #WritingBattle challenges in 2023 and had a 48 hour challenge that began (Friday 9th June) while in Gdansk. I’d hoped that doing some blog travel posts would get the writing juices flowing in preparation, but still I didn’t post. 

We began our six weeks away in Cork, Ireland. When we visit the northern hemisphere we always try to fit Ireland into the itinerary. This time for me, it wasn’t about catching up with people. It was being, breathing, and feeling Ireland that I needed. We settled on a beautiful location in Cork, far enough away that only the very willing would visit with us. And luckily and thankfully my Byrne cousin Kevin with his wife Fiona and my Shelley cousin Pamela and her mum (Aunty) Teresa came down. We spent 9 days at Roches Point, flew to Copenhagen for a couple of days before flying to Bergen to join the cruise.

Eric and I expected that we wouldn’t enjoy cruising and we didn’t really. As a cruise line, Viking was excellent. The staff were fantastic, food was great, scheduling was great. There were no kids, or gambling. 

We were uncomfortable with the degree of attention. I know, you moan when you don’t get service, but we’re complaining about too much. We don’t need someone to come to our room twice a day. We also don’t like scheduling. We’re too used to doing things at our own pace and in our own sweet time. We don’t plan to cruise again.

BUT I would like to cruise the Mekong. Might have to get over myself, hey! 😊

After cruising we spent 10 days in Santorini. We love that island. We first visited in 2013 on a Trafalgar Greek Island tour. We booked a studio apartment overlooking the Caldera, took buses all over, hired a car for one day for a bit more freedom to explore wider, had a beautiful sunset dinner at a winery and spent peaceful hours on our balcony, marvelling at the traffic winding up and down from the ferry (narrow winding roads and coach buses, make for entertaining viewing) while we chatted and read. 

I understand how lucky we are to be able to travel. Could we have paid more attention to saving for our retirement, sure. But we could be dead tomorrow. 

The world is not in a good place, and my joints are terrible. We don’t have an overseas trip planned for 2024. 

But since November 2022 we’ve visited Singapore, Scandinavia, Santorini, Ireland. I’ve been to Melbourne several times, Perth a couple, Tasmania also, so we don’t sit still. 

Once we’ve done the hard work to afford it.