There were a few different considerations for our own travels once we parted company with the van in Baltimore. Since it was now early February and it would not get to Hamburg until late February ( with port calls at New York and Halifax en route ) we could :

A) fly home to Kelowna, wait out out the shipping transit, and then fly to Hamburg when it arrived – this involved considerable backtracking with even more lengthy flights, and more winter time in Canada, so seemed somewhat pointless. But this option would save us precious “Schengen” time in Europe ( more on “Schengen” later). Or, we could:

B) fly directly on to Europe and wander around ( in winter ) with no van to live in – this also seemed a bit foolish; why spend a fortune shipping your vehicle to Europe then travel around Europe without it? It would have also burned up over 3 weeks of precious “Schengen” time, something we were loathe to do without our campervan. Or, we could:

C) fly on from Baltimore to somewhere ( outside Europe ), somewhere ideally hot, ideally interesting, ideally reasonably affordable and, in a perfect world, ideally somewhere we had not explored before. Oh, and if we could use this 3 week interval to celebrate our (just passed) 40th wedding anniversary, well, that would just be the icing on the cake. Hmmmmm…….

Anyway, Lois got to work on option “C” and in short order came up with what we both decided was a spectacularly creative option. We’d make our way to Doha, Qatar, where Norwegian Cruise Lines had an amazing Indian Ocean cruise that stopped in 7 different ports, ending in Port Louis, Mauritius. We’d spend 4 days in Mauritius after the cruise and fly direct to Hamburg after that to meet our van. Ticked all the boxes in “C” and, we felt, made for an appropriate 40th wedding anniversary gift to each other !

So, back to “Schengen”. For reasons known only to the “Eurocrats” in Brussels, non-European residents can now only stay in Europe for a maximum of 90 days in every ( rolling ) 180 days. Such are the tourism rules now in place, named after a small town called Schengen where the scheme was hatched quite some years ago. Meaningless to the average visitor who might spend 3 or 4 weeks in Europe but an absolute logistical nightmare for longer term travellers/retirees who would like to spend 6-12 months ( or more ) roaming around Europe in a campervan. I’ll spare readers the sordid minutiae but let’s just say it’s a major headache with no easy workarounds. People have been screaming about it for years but so far no changes- one must just work with it. With our time in Europe thus rather precious as a result, you can see why we did not want to wait out the van transit “in” Europe. A Middle East detour and Indian Ocean cruise just made much better sense.

Route chosen, we flew out of the US the day after dropping the van at Baltimore port – first stop Iceland. Iceland ? In winter, you ask ? Granted, not the best time to be there but Icelandair offer a great deal to many cities in Europe with a free stopover in Reykjavik – time enough, at least, to experience its legendary Blue Lagoon. More importantly, Iceland is in the Schengen zone so even a 1 day stopover there starts the clock on the 180 day Schengen rule, a factor which could be very significant to us later this year when we want to return to Europe ( we’ll likely fly home for a summer break at some point ). Alas, the weather gods were having none of our plans and freak wind storms in Iceland caused the cancellation of our departing flight from Reykjavik, completely altering our onwards stopovers. It also very much limited what we could do while in Iceland – no rural drives like we had hoped, no “Golden Circle” loops, just the Blue Lagoon experience ( which was wonderful ) and some sightseeing in and around Reykjavik. The revised route onwards to Doha sadly also forced the elimination of a planned stopover in Muscat, Oman. Icelandair rerouted us via London and Frankfurt and eventually we made it to Doha still giving us 4 relaxing days to explore the city before the cruise. Finally somewhere warm – Doha was delightful and we enjoyed all its Middle Eastern charms !

After a very cold drive across the USA, followed by cold and extremely windy weather in Iceland, it was really nice to reach Qatar and have time to relax in some warm weather. One other advantage of taking the slow route is that we completely avoided any jet lag. With 13 days to cross 12 hours of time zones it’s the first time we’ve ever travelled this far and NOT been wiped out by jet lag at the end of it.

After 4 delightful, relaxing days here, our cruise ship pulled into port. So nice to see it – excited to be jumping aboard !

Till next week…..