Friday, 27 November 2015
Charleston, SC

Today is our last day in Charleston and we are not doing much more than relaxing and enjoying the charms of the city.  We all meet for our final meal of this holiday trip at Hyman's Seafood, a legendary place in the city.  What began as a small dry goods store in the late 19th century has become a behemoth restaurant that fills almost the entire block. The restaurant does not take reservations, and although there is a long line waiting for tables when we arrive, there is a wait of only 30 minutes before we are feasting on shrimp, oysters, crab cakes, hush puppies and whole she-crab.

We say our farewells after dinner.  Tomorrow Will and I fly back to Tucson (via Atlanta); Les and Judy fly non-stop to Baltimore; and Steve and Akiko begin their two-day drive back to Austin, TX.  We are already thinking about next year, making suggestions ranging from Tokyo to the west coast of Florida.  We have plenty of time to make our plans.

Saturday, 28 November 2015
Charleston, SC to Tucson, AZ

We have arranged a taxi pickup for 6:30am by the same company that drove us in from the airport just four days ago.  All of our flights are on time, or early, today. We leave CHS at 9:00am and arrive 30 minutes early in ATL at 10:03am; we leave ATL at 11:32am and arrive in Tucson at 1:33pm.  Of course, we did spend an extra two hours flying over two time zones, but we are back home with our kittens shortly after 2pm.

It was a great trip, but we don't have much time to rest or reminisce. We leave in two weeks for our 10-day "Mayan Mystique" cruise on Oceania. We will be home in time for holiday celebrations at the end of the year. 

And for those of you who know that I must already be planning another trip:  I have booked an 18-day cruise from Hong Kong to Mumbai that sails on 24 March 2016. Although I visited some of these ports on the 14-day Holland America cruise in Jan-Feb 2015 (a really great trip), I will also be visiting previously unexplored ports in Thailand, Myanamar (Burma), and India. The highlight of this cruise on the 625-passenger ms Nautica (Oceania cruises) is a three-day stay in Yangon (Rangoon). I am also planning to spend a week in India at the end of the cruise--this may be my only chance to visit that country--even though the weather will already be getting very warm in mid-April. Will has decided to stay at home; 18 days is a little long for him to be at sea.  

Of course, I will be posting as much as I can from our cruise in December, and when we return to Tucson I will give you more information about the up-coming cruise to Mumbai.