a little thing I like to call "summer vacation"

This year our summer vacation is a bit different in that we're meeting Jimmy in Italy and then taking an "Adriatic, Greece and Turkey Cruise" (according to the Norwegian Cruise Line description). This is a "bit different" because a) we don't normally have to "meet" Jimmy for our family vacations and b) we don't normally vacation "on the continent" (that sounds better if you say it in that accent used by the rich guy on Gilligan's Island, Lovey).

Our non-standard vacation plans tend to evolve over time even when we live together, but the vacation plans while Jimmy's been in Afghanistan have done whatever verb means "evolve on steroids".

For instance, our Christmas vacation in England started out as a warm weather beach trip to the Maldives. Until we realized we weren't movie stars, who are apparently the only people who can afford to vacation over Christmas week in the Maldives. They don't do "budget travel" so much in the Maldives.

Then we looked at Greece, but it's too cold in Greece at Christmas to do any of the fun stuff like island hop. We would have been stuck drinking olive oil and eating feta cheese for the whole time.

Then we moved onto a villa in Tuscany but Jimmy had very limited time off and that was going to be too much of a planes, trains and automobiles kind of trip where too much could go wrong.

And that's when we decided on England. A perfect Dickensian (but happier) Christmas in jolly old England. We thought the Lake District, but our friend Monique said too cold and wet but what about the Cotswolds? And that's how we came to stay in London with Monique and Co. before moving on to a lovely old cottage in a quintessential Cotswoldian village where we had the perfect, most restful Christmas holiday.

For our June vacation with Jimmy, we knew we'd have to meet him somewhere "over there" because he has about 20 minutes for this vacation so he can get home by late July (it's all about having so much time "on the ground" to count as one year).

Jimmy really wanted to do a Turkish Blue Cruise where you cruise the Aegean Coast of Turkey on a yacht with anywhere from a couple other people up to a couple dozen people. The yacht is equipped with a chef and waiter who do nothing but cater to your every whim along with a captain who pulls into pristine, private beaches to let you jump off and swim.

Sounds heavenly, right?

We have a Turkish friend whose family does this type of cruise every year and she contacted her guy who gave us a good quote.

Imagine, however, that you're on, say, your honeymoon or what should be an otherwise relaxing vacation. You step onto the yacht, meet the nice man who's going to serve you drinks for the next week, only to see out of the corner of your eye a rambunctious 7 year-old. You'd be begging for a raincheck.

I told Jimmy that would be a great vacation if we were going with a yacht full of friends with children, but it was just too much pressure on me, knowing that I'd worry for the whole trip that Mac was acting too much like a 7 year-old.

So then we agreed on a Mediterranean cruise. I did the appropriate (read here: mind-numbing, exhaustive, leave-no-stone-unturned) amount of research to determine what ships we should go on out of the ones we could afford and then it was just a matter of narrowing down the choices. The itinerary we really wanted to do left on May 29. Mac's school ends on May 28 and there just seemed to be too little wiggle room there in terms of getting to Italy to catch the cruise with luggage making it, etc. Jimmy didn't like the next weekend departure's itinerary, so we settled on a June 12th departure out of Venice with a couple stops in Greece, a stop in Dubrovnik, a stop in Turkey and 2 days at sea (which allowed Jimmy sufficient rest time).

I love, love, love the thrill of the hunt for a good travel deal. Namely because we love to travel and if we can save money on one trip, that frees up money for another trip. I will spend hours on the internet searching and re-searching for the best way to make something that we want to do more affordable. For this cruise, I did cruisecompete.com (which is a great website for finding super cruise deals and which we've used once before with enormous success), Norwegian's site, and other random cruise websites. But I ended up booking through our USAA credit card rewards company. We had a ton of points that had accrued over the years, so between those reward points and "loyalty" points (I have no idea how we got those, except that we do ever-so-loyally use that credit card!), we got the cruise for about 45% less than what we would have paid anywhere else.

I was thrilled with the cruise price but add to that the fact that Uncle Sam is paying for Mac's airfare there, and it's a relative steal of a vacation deal. (As the spouse, I apparently don't rate high enough to get one airfare during the year of separation paid for; only dependent children get one airfare paid for and we've been saving Mac's for this trip. But I did use the rest of those reward points so I got a little bit of a discount on my ticket.)

I've never been to Italy and it seemed a shame to waste the airfare over there without seeing anything but a little of Venice. And as I mentioned, I love saving money on a trip so you can funnel it into another trip. So with some of the money I "saved" us on the cruise price, Mac and I are going to spend 4 days in Rome before we meet Jimmy in Venice. I have rented a cute little studio apartment in Rome, near the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain, from an Italian man named Niccolo. Doesn't that sound wonderful? It even has a little terrace where we can apparently hang our wet clothes after we take them out of the washing machine. How Italian does that sound? If I can smell bolognese sauce while I sit on the terrace, I give you fair warning that you may never hear from me again!

After four days in Rome, we'll catch the super-fast train to Venice where we'll meet Jimmy, who will fly in from Afghanistan via Frankfurt. We'll have a day and a half there before getting on the ship for 7 nights. When we come back, we'll spend one more night in Venice so we can have a Father's Day cappucino with Jimmy before we all head back to our respective "homes".

The great news is that when we leave Jimmy on June 20th, we'll have just about one month left before he's done for good with this assignment. And that will be worth never going to Italy ever again in my life!