2023 New Zealand!

Yep – I’m back. I know. I know. It’s been a while. That’s okay – I mainly just write for myself.

Short story? A friend who lost her husband suddenly a few months back asked me to go with her on a trip. She and her husband have done just shy of 30 trips via Overseas Adventure Travel (they were introduced to the company by my parents, who also traveled with “O.A.T.”!). She was therefore able to obtain a steep discount for booking a trip in a month. Would I go? Maybe we could each be the other’s new travel partner?

My first exclamation: “I snore!”

Her answer? “I wear hearing aids!” (LOL)

HERE‘s the trip.

My husband’s absolute favorite architect is an Austrian named Hundertwasser. His works are exceptionally whimsical. (He once stated that “everyone should have a gold onion dome on top of their house.”) By way of example, the Hundertwasserhaus apartment block in Vienna has undulating floors (“an uneven floor is a melody to the feet”), a roof covered with earth and grass, and large trees growing from inside the rooms, with limbs extending from windows. We stayed at his spa in Bad Blumau once when we were visiting H’s kin in Austria – still the best spa I have ever been to in the world (and we’ve been to quite a few!) There is even a winery near us that we “always were going to visit” that was designed by him.

I turned some of the husband’s ashes into about 100 cremarbles. I have given these out to friends who are traveling, and they send back photos of where he now rests. (That will be a blog post at a later date. Promise.) My plan? Superglue and a marble, et voila – H will be PART of a Hundertwasser! I can hear his laugh and see his smile.

I’ve been my husband’s “wingman” in travel for 20 years. I’m a super amenable travel partner – if things go wrong, I just roll with it. Hopefully that will continue!

In getting the luggage out of the attic (for the first time since H passed), I did have one completely non compos mentis day. It is said that when you lose someone close to you, time passes and it “seems like” you’ve “gotten over” the grief . . . then you find their shoe under a piece of furniture, and dissolve again. Yeah, I get it.

I’ve decided that I will actually bring my computer, so that I can both download photos, and keep a travel diary in the most efficient manner possible. So – here we go!

If you want $100 off, call OAT at 1-800-955-1925 and request a catalog, tell them you were referred by Sandy Shepard, customer number 3087257, and get $100 off your first trip!