Tag: vacation.2007

Summer is here!

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June 21 is the first day of summer in 2007. Summer is here!

When I was a kid, the delineation between spring and summer was much less abstract. It was the day after the last day of school. It was spring and you signed yearbooks and said goodbye to teachers and homework and papers and tests. And then the next day, you woke up, having slept in late, with the sun suddenly warmer in your face, and it was summer! Three whole months without school!

As I got a little older I had a job in the summers (and after school as well) and things started to change, but I look back on those pre-employment summers fondly, as I am sure most people do. Summer mornings were often marked by sleeping in late (until 9 AM!), eating breakfast and then watching a few reruns of shows like Leave It To Beaver, The Dukes of Hazzard, or The Love Boat. Afterward, there were touch football games, tossing around a baseball, and the general interplay of muscle and sinew one would expect from boys at that age.

Sometimes, we’d go to New York for a portion of the summer to stay with our grandparents and that was always a treat. There was a Ray Bradbury-esque quality to those summers: the humidity of the New York air (as compared to Los Angeles); the dinners our grandmother would make us; Carvel ice cream after dinner; fireflies; road trips to Cooperstown and the Catskill Game Farm; Howes Cavern; drives to New Hampshire and into New York City; going to the movies on a rainy day.

I’m not sure we realize how much we really give up when we leave that world and enter the work force. We have to study more and more in high school to prepare for college. In college we have to work hard and that work often consumes the summers, which are somehow not quite the same anyway. After graduating from college, we find a job and we work at it and work at it and the notion of “summer” loses its meaning. Sure, it still gets hot and thunderstorms still rumble through the night. But gone are the late Tuesday mornings. Gone is the time to watch Dukes of Hazzard reruns. Summer becomes just a warmer version of winter, a vicious cycle with no end in sight. Oh, we make take off a week or two and get away somewhere. But what is a week compared to the ten or twelve weeks of summer that we used to get?

This year may be a little different for me–a rare step backward into those lost summers. I am taking of the entire month of July for my vacation–a true sabbatical. Four weeks is not three months, but it is four times longer than a week. I am traveling through 7 countries in Europe, not to mention visiting with friends and family. It is a long enough time to forget about work for a while and focus on what we always focused on back in those halcyon days: having fun. We knew that at some point, far in the future, school lingered, but it was no sword of Damocles. There can be no such thing during the summer.

It may well be my last “summer” in the adolescent sense, for who knows when and if I will get 4 weeks off again. There is retirement, of course, but even that is different. I can’t imagine summers being the same when you have the entire year off. When the entire year seems like summer, it seems as though it loses something.

So I plan on making the most of this abbreviated, but nonetheless traditional summer vacation. When I am back at school work after the vacation is over, I hope to report that it was my best summer vacation ever.

Miscellaneous trip preparation

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I got my United Red Carpet club card in the mail today, which is sooner than the 3-4 weeks they said it would take. I also called United Mileage Plus Visa to find out why I was never credited for some bonus miles I was supposed to get. I appears to be a system error and I was told I would be credited on my next statement.

I noticed that my name of the boarding pass for the cruise didn’t match my passport name (Jamie Rubin on the former versus Jamie Todd Rubin on the latter). I thought they had to match exactly so I updated my profile with my middle name but it still wasn’t printing with my middle name. So I called the cruise line. They explained that they had my middle name on the list that they use to check names against and that I didn’t have anything to worry about.

So a few more items are checked off. I still have a fairly extensive list of things to go.

Got Euros?

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It had been my plan to get some Euros while at the airport before my trip in two weeks. However, this morning, a coworker just back from Europe offered me hers (at the current exchange rate) and so as of this morning, I am the proud owner of a stack of Euros.

It looks like fake money to me.

The most interesting thing about the Euro, if you’ve never seen one, is that their denominations vary in size based on their value. Thus, the E20 is slightly larger than the E10, which is slightly larger than the E5, and so on.

At least I can check another item off of my checklist.

Smooth connections

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Never having traveled internationally before, I am trying to be prepared for my trip, and that includes getting a feel for the airport. I am the only one of the family that has to get a connecting flight outside the U.S. (I fly from Dulles to Munich, Germany, and then connect to a flight to Venice, Italy.)

This evening, I explored the Munich airport terminal 2 maps. Based on what I could find out, my flight arrives in terminal 2, level 2, central. To catch my connecting flight, it seems that I simply have to go upstairs to terminal 2, level 4, central. That seems pretty straight-forward.

I also took a look at Venice Marco Polo Airport, where the very little Italian I have came in handy, until I found the English link. There is one terminal there with a large baggage claim area, a likely place to meet up.

Finally, I made arrangements today to have a car take me to Dulles and to pick me up from the airport when I get back home. A little over 2 weeks and I’m on vacation!

International calling

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Going through my checklist of things I need to do before I go on vacation, this morning I called T-Mobile and had them explain to me how International calling works on my cell phone when I am traveling in Europe. Turns out, its very easy and straight-forward. I spoke to a very enthusiastic support person, who turned out to be very helpful. But that’s nothing unusual since my experience with T-Mobile has always been good.

First, he confirmed that my phone can handle international networks (it’s a quad-band phone) and that my services are all set up for international calling.

Next, he explained the “dialing pattern” while I am abroad. Essentially, any call I make, I hit 0 to pull up the plus (+) sign, then dial the country code, then the local number. Easy to remember. So for calling the U.S., I dial +1 followed by the area code and phone number. In London, to call the hotel I’d dial +44 then the area code and phone number, etc.

He gave me a good tip about voice mail If my phone is on and I get a call and allow it to go to voice mail, I get charged at the local rate for that incoming call. If my phone is off, I don’t get charged for the incoming call, but still get the voice mail message.

Next, he told me that text messages anywhere I travel are $0.35/message for outgoing and $0.15/message for incoming. This will likely be my preferred method of communication since it is very, very cheap.

Finally, he went through the cost per minute for calls originating in each of the countries I will be visiting:

  • Italy, $0.99/minute
  • Greece, $1.49/minute
  • Croatia, $1.49/minute
  • Turkey, $1.99/minute
  • London, $0.99/minute
  • Paris, $0.99/minute

He was very helpful and I am now satisfied that I know how to use my phone internationally and that I know how much it will cost me.

Check one more item off the list!

The contest

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For reasons I am still unclear on, I proposed, over the weekend, that all us guys going on vacation in 19 days refrain from shaving until said vacation was upon us. Everyone agreed and jkashlock has already posted a picture of himself. He challenged me to do the same.

When I proposed this, I hadn’t shaved in about a week, and last night, feeling terribly itchy, I did shave, thinking that no one would really take my challenge seriously. When I was done, I found that Jason had posted his picture, and so now, of course, the game is on. I’ll post a picture later this week, and then periodically thereafter over the next 20 days.

Originally, the idea was for us to shave once on board the ship, but I got to thinking it might be better to shave the day before we left so that our faces better matched our passport pictures.

Why are we doing this? No good reason other than to give us another way to pass the 19 days between now and when we leave on the trip.

Mediterranean Cruise Itinerary

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This post represents my planned itinerary for the cruise portion of my vacation this coming July. It will most likely be updated frequently, up-to and including commencement of the trip, but I wanted to have one place where I could post my plans and allow people to make comments or suggestions and this place is is.

July 4 – Venice

  • ?? – Dinner in Venice?

July 5 – Venice (depart at 1 PM)

  • 6 PM – Dinner

July 6 – Dubronvik (8 AM – 6 PM)

July 7 – Corfu (8 AM – 6 PM)

  • 6 PM – Dinner

July 8 – Katakolon (7 AM – 4 PM)

  • 8 AM – Massage
  • 6 PM – Dinner

July 9 – Athens (6 AM – 5:45 PM)

July 10 – Mykonos (7 AM – 6 PM)

  • Mom and Dad’s 40th wedding anniversary
  • 6 PM – Dinner

July 11 – Kusadasi (8 AM – 5 PM)

July 12 – Rhodes> (8 AM – 5 PM)

July 13 – Santorini (7 AM – 6 PM)

  • 6 PM – Dinner

July 14 – At Sea

  • 4 PM – Massage
  • 6 PM – Dinner

July 15 – Naples (7 AM – 6 PM)

It’s all Greek to me

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I finished Barry Malzberg’s Breakfast in the Ruins on the train ride home this evening and it was absolutely terrific! While I don’t necessarily agree with his positions on science fiction, he is an amazing writer with incisive insights into all aspects of the genre. He writes with emotion and gravitas and I completely enjoyed this “extended” version of The Engines of the Night

Next on tap: a couple of history books, first on Greek history and then Roman history. I have an almost complete set of history books that Isaac Asimov wrote for Houghton Mifflin over the years (beginning in the 1960s and well into the 1970s). I’ve only ever read one of them (The Land of Canaan) and seeing how I will be in Italy and Greece soon, I thought boning up on my Greek and Roman history was just the thing. I’ve read Will Durant’s The Life of Greece and portions of his book Caesar and Christ, but I was looking for something a little bit lighter and I think these two books will fit the bill perfectly.

(And if they really work out well, I’ll add The Shaping of England and The Shaping of France to the list, since I will also be in London and Paris during my trip.)

I’m starting with Asimov’s The Greeks and therefore, for the next couple of days, it’s all Greek to me!

Cruising along

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A few days ago, the Parental Units told me that I would be receiving my Official Cruise Documents today, delivered via DHL. They would require signature, and naturally, they would arrive on a day when I could not possibly work from home, what with the two and a half dozen meetings I had to squeeze in.

I got home late this evening and when I opened the screen door to unlock the door to the house, there, leaning up against the door were my Official Cruise Documents. So much for requiring a signature.

The Parental Units instructed me to check them careful and I did but aside from the spelling of my name (which, for as easy as it is, is misspelled more often than not), I knew not what else to check. Unless I hear otherwise, I will just assume that they are right and I am in good standing.

54 days and counting.

Vacation books

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With my vacation less than 83 days away, I have begun to consider what books I want to take along with me to read while I’m on the trip. To this end, and being a software developer by trade, I have developed a framework to help determine what books shall be brought and what books shall be left behind.

This is a three-pronged framework:

  1. The books must be purely for entertainment purposes; no nutritional value
  2. The books must be paperbacks because (a) I don’t want to lug hardcover books in my luggage and (b) paperbacks can be left for the crew after consumed.
  3. The books must be vacuous enough to be completed within a day or so.

Given this elaborate framework, here are some thoughts I have on what to bring:

A couple of a Agatha Christie novels, perferably Hercule Poirot mysteries.

A few golden-age era science fiction novels (some Arthur C. Clarke, Lester Del Rey, maybe some Cyril Kornbluth or Robert Heinlein.) These, alas, I won’t give away to the crew.

Anything by George Burns that I haven’t already read.

I’m open to other suggestions that fit within the above framework. Comment if you have any thoughts.

Summer vacation theme song!

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I’ve been seeking the perfect theme song for the upcoming summer vacation in Europe. This evening, I have finally settled on one, which seems perfect to me: “Come Sail Away” by Styx. Aside from the sailing motifs, it seems like a great getaway song. I can picture myself listening to the song on my iPod as the ship disembarks from Venice, Italy, 89 days from now.