We Take Ourselves With Us

This summer's vacation began with Harper's desire to go to Greece--really, Santorini.  A desire borne, of all things, by the Mamma Mia! movies (the popularity of which apparently extends far beyond the Rose set).  So, we decided to make it an early (very early) graduation gift and set about researching a cruise that would take in as much of Greece as possible and that worked with her existing commitment to be a camp counselor.  Which is why we booked a 12 night cruise with Holland America that had only two sea days and visited almost every island (including Santorini) and took in a bit of Italy, too.  Over several months, I tracked flights on Google, researched excursions, and read reviews, and by July 5, we were ready to make the trek to Toronto to grab our direct flight to Rome. Something happened in those eight plus hours in the air though.  Maybe it was the stormy harbinger of Kawhi's decision to bolt from the Raptors to the Clippers, but the flight was...

Our last day!  The Kiwi Clan picked us up and took us to Jen's favorite cafe near our AirBnB.  The day was a bit cloudy but dining al fresco worked.  Oddly, we ran into our waitress from earlier in the week when we left our breakfast.  Zena was minding her parents dogs for the day and immediately recognized us.  Oh, NZ! Earlier in the week, Kent had told us about Kelly Tarlton and his epic quest to build an aquarium in Auckland.  He said it was small and overpriced ... but as readers of this blog will know, we love aquariums !  One of our earliest vacations with the kids (Penn still in utero, Harper about a year) was in Long Beach, and I'll always remember Harper banging on the glass of the Long Beach Aquarium with her chubby hand trying to get the fish to come to her.  We've been to so many since then.  So, overpriced or not, we were going! RIP Kelly Tarlton who had a crazy vision of building an aquarium out of discarded s...