As usual, I learned a lot:
1. The weather may be reasonable when you check for temperatures in Madrid, Lisbon, and Porto - but inland Portugal, where your riverboat travels, is hotter than you can tolerate with anything approaching good sportsmanship. Bright sun, dry climate, hilly with cobblestones. You sweat all day long, and the cooling device you brought breaks on the second day.
2. You hope you will never see another cathedral or another winery. For a person of faith, a church of any religion is a comfort. For you, not so much. You'd rather be out in the world, doing, than sitting in a church praying (that's a UU speaking)! And if you haven't had a drink for many years, the wineries, even with their interesting origins and modern aesthetics, are a place you have no interest in.
3. If you pay attention to your feet, you won't fall, even on cobblestones or stairways.
4. You get stronger when you walk every day and get on and off tour buses. When you get home, your massage therapist says, "you've got a toned butt!"
5. Traveling is harder work than it was when you were younger. It takes you over a week to reclaim yourself at home. Not just the jet lag, but the energy required for a day in your life.
6. When you can't imagine having the stamina or strength to fly to Australia for the two-week cruise there and in New Zealand - which you've booked for three months from now - you tell your husband you don't have it in you. You suspect he doesn't have it in him either, but you don't tell him that. Instead, you cancel the trip on the last day you are eligible for a full refund. You are relieved, but your husband is disappointed.
7. When you go on two river cruises in three years with a friend and without your husband, he is disappointed and a little ticked off. He would like you to find another river cruise for the two of you to go on. But another river cruise doesn't sound appealing when you're still recovering from the last trip.
8. Being a loyal partner, you find an alternative that meets your husband's needs and yours. You sign up with Road Scholar for a 22-passenger canal barge cruise in France next April. Business class flights. Much more doable than Australia and New Zealand, on an ocean ship with 960 passengers. You hope.
9. You are continuously grateful that you have the resources and the health to travel in your 70s.
10. Farmers grow sunflowers in Portugal.
