Snowball trip: Month long retirement celebration, British Isles “Bravehearts” reunion cruise, City of Lights, tulips and windmills, parmesan cheese farm, fast cars, Enchanting Venice, all rolled into one!

It’s official tomorrow, April 1, 2014, we will both be retired!  Tim had unexpected surgery in early February that delayed his retirement for one month and I retired March 1 as planned.  This last month has been so nice not working and being home with Tim while he recovered.  We had a much needed break from the cold winter, which seems is never going to end, when we went to Florida for 10 days to visit my brother and Tim’s aunt in Palm city last month.  Our next adventure starts this weekend when we will fly to Paris for a few days then on to the Netherlands for windmills and tulips in bloom before our first river cruise.  Thank goodness the retirement decision was made before we bought our airplane tickets.   We got to extend this cruise on both ends because the day had finally come when work did not dictate how long we could be away!  We will spend time in Switzerland and Italy after the cruise down the Rhine River with German and French ports ending in Basel, Switzerland where we have rented a chalet on Lake Brienz for 5 nights with some cruising friends we met a few years ago on the British Isles cruise.  Then we will take a scenic, all day train ride into Italy where we are staying a few days in a smaller, less touristy Italian town for the first time with a side trip to the Ferrari factory before ending in the ever magical Venice.  We have a pretty full schedule and I will try to post blog updates and photos as we have time.