Pre trip prep

All the education and preparation is half the fun of the trip. With the trip only 2 months away, we have most everything done. We are doing a bike trip with VBT from Seville to Granada in Spain with some people from the Get Off Your Rockers group, followed by a cruise from Barcelona to Athens on Princess. 

Our Doggie is going to stay with Cate. We are going to fly Delta first class (first time ever - can't wait!) San Diego to LAX, then LAX to Paris, then Paris to Seville. That will take 2 days. Then we have several days touring in Seville, before we meet our biking group. We have traveled with VBT before and they were lovely. They provided our lemon or orange flavored water for our ride, have lovely guides and a van if you are too tired to finish the ride. That should not apply to us as we are taking spin classes and doing a fair amount of riding to get prepared. They take your luggage from place to place, and will be providing most of the meals. They have some tours set up for us as well, picnicking, wine, and olive oil tasting, cooking demonstrations. It should be a blast.

Then we get to locate the train station and will travel from Granada to Barcelona. We have 2 days to explore Barcelona before we board our cruise. I want to see the Gaudi buildings, the park, and La Sagrada Familia Church. We booked a "Gastronomic tour", and a city tour that will pick us up at our hotel and drop us off at the cruise ship.

The tricky part for the cruise right now is they plan to mail us our medallions that act as a boarding pass and room key. They should arrive on May 13th, and we leave on May 14th so if they are late we will not have them. Princess insists we can get them in Barcelona if they do not arrive before we depart. We booked a mini suite on the Baja deck with a balcony.

We will be visiting Gibraltar, Marseille, Genoa, Livorno, Rome, Crete, Kusadasi, Istanbul, Mykonos, and arriving in Athens. We have already chosen shore excursions in each port and paid for them.

When we arrive in Athens and disembark, we chose a tour that will pick us up at the ship and take us on a tour of Athens and watch our luggage and drop us at our hotel when we are done.

The next day Paul is planning a 14 hour train trip to the Greek countryside and monastaries of Meteora and back. 

The next day we head to the airport, collapse in a heap, and fly back Athens to Atlanta, then to San Diego. We get back late at night so we will go get our doggie the next morning.