We Take Ourselves With Us

After spending our last summer vacation in the South, this year, we decided to take a turn North ... to Alaska!  We'll be on the Norwegian Sun sailing from Vancouver, Canada to Seward, Alaska; then spend some time in Anchorage to tour Denali; then head back to Vancouver for a few days to explore the city. Our trip has been planned for months as I jenga'd across four very different Kress-Davis summertime calendars (meetings, camps, diving, more meetings, budget presentations) to find a cruise that worked (which quickly got us from infinity to ... two); obsessively scoured the interwebs for ship photos and reviews; filled my now-patented trip spreadsheet with possible excursions for family consideration; and tracked weather in a half dozen Alaskan ports of call.  This sucker was buttoned up, people. But, as Outkast sings, "You can plan a pretty picnic but you can't predict the weather," and in the last week, just about everything that c...

Since the mid-90s, Ned's sister and her branch of the Davis family tree have lived in Auckland, New Zealand--land of extraordinary natural beauty, many hobbitses, Russell Crowe, and no visits from the Kress-Davis family.  But, this holiday season, we decided to change this last one and buckle in for the 24+ hours of travel to lovely NZ. We began with an overnight in Toronto, at a remarkably solicitous and comfy airport Hilton--with a great breakfast buffet--that allowed us to get to our cross-Canada flight with a bit less stress.  Check out our new hiking boots! Air Canada decided to get us back on stress-track, though.  For reasons no one at the airport could explain, the airline cancelled our long-booked, premium-paid exit row seats and scattered us around the plane for the five hour flight to Vancouver.  Sigh.  After considerable discussion, we eventually cobbled together two sets of paired seats about two dozen r...