About Us

Welcome!

Our names are Chuck and Stephanie, and we were married in September, 2008. This Travel Site started as a result of our first major trip together, our Honeymoon.  That trip was our first major trip together and also our first Transatlantic Cruise, departing from Venice, Italy, and ending in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.   We spent a few nights in Rome before the cruise started.  Now, we have documented 22 trips on this site, these trips mostly represent our more significant trips, there were also a few short Caribbean cruises that we took that are not included.

We have enjoyed many cruises, mainly on Princess Cruise Line early on, but have also included Royal Caribbean and Viking Ocean Cruises in our cruise repertoire.  After living in Florida for many years, where it was very easy and convenient (read: inexpensive) for us to travel on cruises departing or arriving in Ft. Lauderdale, we now live in South Carolina, and have been here for 12 years. 

Moving to South Carolina meant losing the opportunity to take advantage of cruising without the additional expense of airfare, or long drives with overnight hotel stays.  It is now a ten-hour drive for us to reach the ports in South Florida.   However, the extra distance did not initially hamper our cruising, we just needed to adjust to the difference in how we got to Ft. Lauderdale.

Our travels together started with a couple of Eastern Caribbean Cruises, and then we progressed to our first transatlantic cruises for our honeymoon in 2008, as noted above.  We enjoy the transatlantic cruises because they provide us with several “sea days” while crossing the Atlantic Ocean. We savor the relaxing time on board the ship during the days at sea. So far, we have been on nine Transatlantic Cruises and one 28-day roundtrip cruise from Los Angeles to Bora Bora, our longest cruise with the most sea days and our longest trip to date.

After mostly documenting cruise travel on this site, we expanded our travels to include land-based trips, mainly to Europe, which allowed us a different perspective from cruising. One main advantage of land trips is the ability to be in destination cities at night to experience visiting them after dark, something you rarely get the chance to do on a cruise when you are normally departing ports before sunset. Land-based trips also eliminate the need to precisely plan shore excursions, you are not “on the clock” to disembark and return to the ship on relatively short port visits.

Of course, with land-based trips, we go through much more detailed planning, such as finding hotels for all the nights of the trip, unlike on a cruise where you are returning to the comfort and familiarity of your ship’s cabin. Our only downside of land-based trips is the constant packing and repacking of the suitcases during short overnight hotel stays.  We have adjusted to that by trying to stay longer at various places and to rent apartments to have more space.

In the end, we enjoy both forms of travel and welcome the varied experiences and adventures they both offer.  Lately, we are finding that we enjoy the land-based trips more than cruising because many of the Transatlantic cruise stops were becoming a little repetitive.l Also, when COVID-19 impacted travel, especially cruises during its peak, cruising became a little more risky from a health perspective.

With COVID-19 now having less of an impact on overall travel, we have recently started traveling more once again, and that included one of our most favorite trips, a Viking Cruises Expedition cruise to Antarctica in 2023.

We have been running this Travel Site for over 15 years, and have seen significant changes in our travel over that period.  We have utilized several different WordPress Themes for the site, having to constantly stay ahead of the changes in technology.  We have tried to maintain some consistency in the layout of the various individual trip sites, but have occasionally experimented with some very different layouts.  About the time we get used to a particular WordPress theme, it is often abandoned by the theme author due to significant changes in the WordPress code, making it very difficult to keep the architecture of the theme updated.  It has become quite an effort to maintain this site, and we may not keep it up much longer, but for now, we will forge ahead.  It still provides us with a reminder of the places we have been and our many experiences from our travels.

We hope you enjoy our Travel Site!