Janet and Mark's Retirement Trips

Feb 18-20: United SFO to Singapore to Bali One cannot prepare for any 17 hour flight--you just gotta go with the flow, catch as much sleep as you can, and hopefully you can tough it out at the destination particularly once you lose a day crossing the International Date Line, leaving late on the 18th, and finally arriving in Bali on the 20th.  Here is the laundry list of movies I knocked off on both flights: The Holdovers: meh Wolf of Wall Street: excellent Ron Burgundy, Anchorman: not my kind of humor Blade Runner 2049: confusing Drive (more Ryan Phillope): meh Barbie: very clever and funny The Singapore airport, where we had a significant layover, is quite the stimulant, despite spending most of our time in the Singapore Airlines lounge.  EVERY terminal, and there were four, had multiple copies of luxury designer shops, and all were very busy.  Somebody's economy is booming... The two-hour flight to Bali/Denpasar was perfect for watching Barbie, and we got picked up by t...

That's Half Dome out there...it was windy too! Janet and I do a lot of our travel planning first thing in the morning while having our coffees.  Late in 2022, Janet was trolling around the United Airlines site and blurted out, "hey, flights to London have really come down...you want to go to London in March?" London is neck and neck as my favorite with Paris and Munich, so I said, "Sure!" and over the next cup, we had the flight, an AirBnB right by Covent Garden and Chinatown and close to five different Tube stations...all booked that morning! Next winter (2023), again, over morning coffee, Janet asks, "do you want to go to DC this coming January?"  I love all the Smithsonians and spending all day in a museum in the dead of winter was a no-brainer..."Absolutely!" This summer (2024), Janet signed up for a "Knitting Retreat" in Cambria, and when she asked if I wanted to go, I said yes.  I don't knit, but the riding between Cambria...

Sometime early this year (2023) Janet, over early morning coffee, asked if I wanted to go to Jordan?  Jordan?!?  That's the Middle East!  She had received an email from her women's pilot organization, The 99's, announcing the 2023 International Conference in Amman, Jordan.  We spent the rest of that morning noodling over flights, details of the conference, etc.  The conference was reasonably priced, and included transportation and lodging from Amman to Petra, Wadi Rum, and Aqaba.  After Indy Jones 3 featuring Petra's Treasury, I was hooked.  We do a lot of independent travel in Western Europe, but I'd think hard before traveling to the Middle East on our own.  So, the prospect of being on a guided tour with tough, independent travelers (you can't say women pilots are timid at all) in a place we'd never see on our own sold us! A few hitches arose: the first was in checking the dates of the tour and my Passport expiration showed my Passport would ex...