Was it enough?

YES it was enough. We signed on to an 11 day cruise which would begin in Athens and end in Barcelona. Plans were made to fly into Athens a day early to get over jet lag and to see the Parthenon and then board the ship for our 30th anniversary cruise.

But remember that we were signing on a full year in advance so the wait was going to be excruciating. To pass the time and make sure that we didn't miss a thing on this trip, I began to research the ship, it's food and amenities, the cities we were scheduled to see and the shore excusions available.

What I found was some rather expensive shore excursions but never fear, we had plenty of time to save up for our choices. Even though they weren't going to take you to the exact spots we wanted to see (in other words I couldn't see both the Sistene Chapel AND the Coliseum in the one day we had in Rome) I could pick out some pretty interesting trips all the same.

Since we were traveling with others all of us were constantly talking about which trip and which shore excusions sounded better than the others. We even had a meeting to see if we could explore setting up our own excusions since we had enough numbers to perhaps split a small bus or get a better rate on several rental cars or getting our own private tour guide.

The excitement continued with each conversation. Well, at least amoung the other travelers. My husband had committed himself to go but basically was he was letting me make all the plans. The good news was that he knew how much this trip meant to me so basically wherever I wanted to go was fine with him. The bad news was that since I was doing all the planning I would probably get all the blame if things went wrong.

And as the date approached for our departure, things did go awfully wrong. But I'm going to show you how we turned all that "wrong" into "right" and had one of the best vacations of our life.

A Cruise? Are you Nuts?

For my 25th wedding anniversary I talked my husband into our first cruise. Money was not an object at the time but time was at a premium. (Isn't that always the way it is, plenty of time but no money or plenty of money but no time - self employed people, I'm sure you understand)

Anyway, we went on a cruise from New Orleans to Cozumel. Little did I know that my planning for the trip to coincide with the exact dates of our anniversary, June 16, also coincided with hurricane season in the Gulf.

Needless to say we were sea sick the whole time. I even have pictures of our suite with water leaking under the stateroom door from the balcony.

So when I brought up the idea of a European Cruise for our 30th anniversary to my husband there was a rather negative response. OK, basically he just said "no way".

So I approached my mom. She was in her late 70's at the time but still ready willing and able to travel. But not on a cruise. Her point was that she didn't think she'd be able to walk enough to enjoy the ports of call and cruises aren't really her thing either.

Now I'm not crazy about cruises, myself, but I've always wanted to go to Europe and I figured having your room and food prepaid plus getting to see more than one place in Europe would fill the bill for me, irreguardless of my lean toward motion sickness.

Suggestions were made to me to take a "friend" but I figured this might be a once in a lifetime trip with the condition the world is in since 9/11 and there was no way I was going to gaze upon the beauty of the cities of Europe without a really close loved one next to me to share it with.

So when a friend who has taken several European cruises came to me with information about a pretty good deal I started my campaign to win over Mom or my husband Ed to the idea of traveling with me.

I read them all the info and showed them all the books. I took them to a presentation from the travel agency and went online to find things they would enjoy doing both on and off the ship.

I became so bothersome that my mother told me that if I would just quit bugging her about it that she'd pay for 1/2 the cruise as a 30th anniversary present to my husband and I. "Now go bug your husband."

So, with the trip even more affordable all I had to do was convince my husband, Ed, to go. How'd I do that? How does someone convince a confirmed non cruise to take a cruise? - more tomorrow.