by Jim Bellomo | Apr 18, 2026 | Uncategorized
Fom a recent trip (2024) to NYC. This was a two day stop off the Oceania Vista. Our trip this time will be six nights in a hotel in Times Square
We are back to traveling! YEAH!!! In less than two weeks, Kathleen and I will get up really early (4:00 am) and meet 26 other Trilogy residents at our clubhouse for a ride to SeaTac Airport, where we will all board Alaska Air flight 34 nonstop to the Big Apple.
I know this sounds very different from our usual trips. For one thing, we don’t usually travel with 41 people, but we will this time. If you are a regular reader, you know that we live in a 55+ community called Trilogy on Redmond Ridge in Washington State. Our community has an active Travel Club, and I happen to be its president. One of the things the Travel Club does is offer quarterly trips for members. In the 20+ years the Trilogy Travel Club has existed, it has traveled to every continent except Antarctica, visited more than 50 countries, and traveled all over the US.
I joined almost as soon as we moved four years ago and was asked to join the board and take over as Vice President and Communications Director in my first year. I became president the second year and have been ever since. I tell you all this because, in that time, there have been more than 12 Travel Club trips, and we have been on exactly NONE OF THEM!
So we decided we needed to join one, and along came a theater tour to New York City. Two of our members participated in a theater tour sponsored by a local theater group and LOVED it. They thought it would make a great trip to offer to the club. So we contacted Alex at Break-Away Tours, who had led the theater tour they went on, and started setting this up.
To get a little deeper into why this trip will be special for the Club,I need to let you know that up until the pandemic, the Club trips had a very high rate of participation. Usually, the Club’s trips and tours would have 20-30 members (out of our total of 450 members) traveling on them. Since the pandemic, it has been hard to get back to those numbers. Our norm right now is somewhere around eight people. Sometimes as few as four. We have started working with tour companies who don’t have minimums for tours because they will do a tour with 16 people and combine our eight with four from somewhere else and four more from another place. It’s great but not what used to happen.
On this theater tour, we (the Travel Club Board) decided to roll the dice and do a private tour with a minimum number of people required, or the tour would not go. Break-Away only does private tours, so we had to have at least 20 going. To be honest, when we rolled out the trip, I wasn’t sure it would go. Getting 21 people to want to travel that far and spend that much was a distant memory in our Club’s history.
But lo and behold, three days after we put the trip on sale, we were sold out with 41 people headed to Broadway. In fact, up until our final payment date on Valentine’s Day, we had a waiting list of 8 more people who, sadly, won’t be joining us.
So that’s why, a week from Thursday, Kathleen and I will get up early, board a “luxury motor coach” I have arranged, and take off on a Broadway adventure. We will be in NYC for 7 days/6 nights, leaving on April 30 and returning home on May 6.
The trip itself looks to be amazing. We have tickets for three Broadway musicals and one straight play, lots of different tours, six nights at the Westin Times Square (where we can walk to every theater in less than 10 minutes) and a bunch more that I will detail between now and when we leave.
Needless to say, we have never done a tour like this. Most people we have ever traveled with were on our Martini Mates reunion cruise to Alaska in 2017, when we had 17 people on Celebrity’s Solstice. This will definitely be an adventure, and I will be detailing it all here on our blog. If you want to follow along, make sure to sign up to be notified when I post.
Broadway is a main artery of New York life – the hardened artery. —Walter Winchell
by Jim Bellomo | Nov 29, 2023 | Air travel
It seems like just yesterday when we got back home from our Oceania Vista cruise from Montreal to Miami, but tomorrow morning, we are off to the airport again for an adventure that has been in the planning stages (and completely paid for) since 2018.
Way back when (doesn’t 2018 sound like a long time ago?), we booked a Viking River cruise to see the Christmas markets on the Danube River. We paid in full at the end of 2018 for a Christmas Market cruise that would sail in December 2020. Well, we all know what happened to that cruise—COVID.
At that point Viking offered us 125% future cruise credit to let them keep our money and take the cruise in 2021. We thought, “Where else could we get a 25% return on our money,” so we said YES! But then it was late November of 2021, and the Delta variant hit Europe. The cruise was still going to sail, but the countries we would be visiting had all closed their Christmas Markets, and most of them would not even allow the boat to dock. So when Viking asked us if we wanted to reschedule to 2022, we said okay. I mean, why go if there is nothing to see?
But the problem then was that by that time (Christmas 2021), all the 2022 Christmas Market cruises were sold out…so here we are in November 2023, getting ready to board a Delta flight to Europe tomorrow morning. We really don’t start the cruise itself (our first river cruise) until the ninth, but when we spend the time and money to fly to Europe, we just can’t see staying for just a week.
We will start our adventure tomorrow with a non-stop flight to Paris and a short flight down to Lisbon, Portugal. We have never been to Portugal, and it is one of my absolute bucket list destinations. We have a very busy five days planned before we fly north to Prague where we join the two-night in Prague followed by a trip by “luxury motor coach” to a one-night stay in Nuremberg on a pre-cruise extension with Viking. After that, we board the Viking longboat Gullveig for our cruise down the Danube. Here’s our route. 
As you can see, after we leave Nuremberg, we travel by “luxury motor coach” to Regensburg, where we board Gullveig and then sail to Passau, Krems, Vienna and finally, Budapest. We are spending two nights after the cruise in Budapest before we fly home on December 18th…which just happens to be my 71st birthday—never spent my birthday on a plane before. Hope they have cake! ?
We hope you will follow along with us. I would promise daily reports, but there are no “sea days” on riverboats, and that means I will do my best to get posts up and online at the end of our day. Can’t wait to tell you all about it. Come back tomorrow when I hope to do a quick story about our flights and our fun time with Air France and Delta.
Airplane travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo. – Al Gore
by Jim Bellomo | Sep 1, 2023 | Uncategorized
We are traveling THIS month. Now I can say that. Before September comes to an end, Kathleen and I will embark on our first major trip since September of last year, when we spent almost a month in Europe. For people like us who LOVE TO TRAVEL, this is just too long not to be on the road. I suppose I should be reminded that we did a five-day Holland America cruise in May, but I would rather forget that one; it was so bad.
Who’s going with us?
Besides us, we are traveling with a group of five that includes our regular traveling companions, my brother and sister-in-law (Steve and Jamie) and three of our best friends (Mike, Cathy and Jocelyn) as well. It should be an interesting trip as one of our party (Jocelyn) will be on her first cruise. Steve and Jamie are now seasoned international travelers, and Mike is well-known in the cruising world for his outstanding travel reviews (check them out here). He will undoubtedly do a review (with lots of photos) for this cruise after he is back home, so make sure to check his site around November 1, and you can compare his experiences to mine. I like live-blogging the cruise each and every day, so you get to read mine while it happens.
We first met Mike and the first love of his life, Carol, on a cruise in 2005, and we became close friends. The six of us (including our best buddies Bob and Judy) traveled together quite often over the years in between. Sadly, in those intervening years, we lost both Judy and Carol. We traveled with Mike alone once, but we could tell it wasn’t his best trip. Travel is something you need to do with someone. About three years ago, Mike met Cathy, and if you check out his website, you will see they are traveling like crazy.
Some of us get to have one great love in our life. Mike got lucky; he got two. Cathy is awesome, and other than when they visited us here in Redmond and when we visited them in Wellington, Florida, we have never traveled together before, so this will be FUN!
It is even more fun that our good friend Jocelyn is also joining us. It’s her first cruise. We always say that Jocelyn is the person who introduced Kathleen and I. She really didn’t do the formal introductions, but way back in November of 1997, when I was going through my divorce and feeling very sad, she came into my office in downtown Leavenworth and gave me a kick in the ass pep talk—told me to get on with my life. She told me about a dating website where she had met a nice gentleman that she had started dating. She talked me into checking it out right then and there. It wasn’t like dating websites now; it was more of a bulletin board where people posted what they were looking for in a partner. And the very first posting I saw…was Kathleen’s. The rest is history.
What are we doing?
We are doing a cruise on a brand new cruise line (for us) and a brand spanking new ship. As long-time readers of these posts know, we were very loyal Celebrity cruisers, have done a few on Holland America and gave Viking Ocean a try. But our friend Mike has been sailing Oceania without us. And he keeps telling us how great it is. So when Kathleen and I heard that he and Cathy were doing this cruise, we decided to come along. We were lucky to do that because this cruise was (at that point) sold out. We were only able to get “guarantee” staterooms. That meant we had yet to determine where we would be on the ship, but we were guaranteed to have someplace to sleep. We got the last “guarantee” stateroom about a year ago. Since then, other guarantees and stateroom reservations have been opened, so Jocelyn, Steve and Jamie could join us.
Oceania is known for having the “best food at sea,” so we shall see. I am trying to temper my enthusiasm so I don’t have expectations that can’t be fulfilled except by perfection (like I did with Viking Ocean). It may help that the ship we will sail on is Oceania’s newest, Vista. She was launched in May of this year and has been following a route from the Italian shipyard where she was built, across the Atlantic, up the St. Lawrence Seaway to Montreal.
As ships go, she is not one of the big ones. She is slightly larger than the Viking Sky that we sailed on last September with a total of 1218 passengers as opposed to the Viking ships that carry just under 1,000. This is the size of ship we will be the most comfortable with going forward. We already have another trip planned on Viking Ocean for next June.
Where are we going?
So now you know who is going, the next question is, “Where are we going?” This is an almost three-week trip that will give us a few days in Montreal (a city we have not visited before) and then a cruise all the way to Miami. Here’s our route and stops in graphic form on this map I stole from Oceania Cruises.
We did the New England part of this cruise back in 2018, but there are some places in that region we have yet to go to, including Saguenay, Shelburne, Bar Harbor and Martha’s Vineyard. We have been to Charleston, but only on a land trip, not a cruise. Plus, we are thrilled to be stopping for an overnight visit to the Big Apple. We get to see a show (last year’s big hit, Six), and I get to do an early morning photo walk around the city!
And strangely enough, for people like us who have been on more than 30 cruises, we have never sailed into or out of Miami, one of the world’s largest cruise ports. Every time we have been to Florida, we have sailed in or out of Fort Lauderdale, a few miles up the coast. But there have been a few challenges as we are flying home from Fort Lauderdale, so we have to figure out how to get there.
When are we going?
As I mentioned—we are going this month. We fly from Seattle to Montreal on Wednesday, the 27th and board the ship on Friday, the 29th. The ship does not leave Montreal until late afternoon on the 30th, so that should give us three full days to explore Montreal. We finish in Miami on the 14th and fly home from Fort Lauderdale.
Why?
You have to ask? Because it’s been too long since we sailed on a cruise that was a true adventure. Someplace we haven’t been before. And I promise to take you along with my usual daily reports. Watch for them starting around September 25th as we pack our bags to go.
As Daddy said, life is 95 percent anticipation. —Gloria Swanson
by Jim Bellomo | Aug 24, 2022 | Air travel
We were on our group text with my brother and his bride yesterday when I mentioned my frustration with our current situation. We are leaving for our almost month-long Mediterranean trip next Monday and to be honest, we are in what I call the holding pattern part of travel. That part of every trip comes around twice. We are in the middle of the first holding pattern.
This holding pattern is the one where you have pretty much everything you can do to prepare all done but you really can’t start packing yet. You can do things like take out the garbage, turn off the water to your washer, put the trickle charger on the car, and set your light timers. We really can’t even pack yet because we need to wear some of the clothes we are taking between now and then.
Sure we can make lists of things we need to do but in the meantime, we really can’t do any of it until Saturday, Sunday or early Monday.
Early Monday brings me to the second part of the holding pattern. Normally we get to skip this part of the trip because when we fly domestically we almost always fly early in the morning. Sometimes at a god-awful O-dark-30. But when we fly to Europe, it’s another story. Most of the flights from Seattle to Europe don’t leave until late afternoon or early evening. That means that on Monday, we will be all packed and ready to go by 10:00 am or so and then we will just sit around until it’s time to head to the airport around 2:00 pm.
Our flight doesn’t leave until 5:20 pm. But we do prefer it that way when we are flying across that many time zones. When we go at that time it really helps us to fight the jet lag. We board (if the flight is on-time…yesterday it was two hours late) at 4:45, get settled in, and probably have a glass of champagne in our hands by 5:00. Then take off by 5:30. If that all works they serve us dinner (yes, we are in business class) around 6:30 we will have dinner. After that, maybe watch a movie and then try and get some sleep for 4-6 hours. Then we are awakened for breakfast and land in Amsterdam around noon. That to me is a perfect schedule. But it does involve that holding pattern.
So today I am taking up some of our current holding pattern by doing this post. And then I am going to an afternoon Mariner game with my son. Watch this space either tomorrow or Friday for the full itinerary of the trip.
Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting. —Joyce Meyer
by Jim Bellomo | Mar 7, 2022 | Air travel
Editor’s note: After I mistakenly pushed Publish on my last post before I had added photos, I am going to no longer have the entire post go out in an e-mail. You will get the headline and the first paragraph followed by a link to click to see the entire post online. Thanks for looking at it that way.
Typical Domestic Economy Class
Winding up our discussion of flying classes/categories, let’s finish with the Premium Economy, international Economy and Economy. But first, let’s talk about domestic economy class because we all know that hell hole that we have all flown a lot of the time. We still fly it when we travel along the West Coast but we do our best to make the situation better with plane and airport choices. Here are some of the things we recommend for those flying domestic economy.
If you fly domestic economy and want to have as good an experience as possible here are some things we do to make it better.
- Choose a better airplane if you can. When we book a flight I will often look (if multiple flights are going to that city) for a particular airplane to fly on. We have grown to love flying on Embraer jets. If you have never flown one, they are smaller planes (not too small—you can still stand up in them) and if you pick the correct economy row (the first one behind First Class) you have more legroom than those in FC. Also, the seat configuration is 2-2 so there is no chance you will ever get a middle seat. One drawback to these planes is that you can’t take a standard carry-on onboard the plane. There is just no room in the overhead compartments so I usually gate-check my carry-on bag.
- Choose a better airport if you can. We have been blessed for the last few years that Alaska Air has started flying to most destinations on the West Coast from Paine Field in Everett (PAE). For us, it is about the same distance from our house to Everett as it is to Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA). PAE is much smaller (like about 5% the size of SEA) and the smaller the airport, the smaller the planes (Alaska only flies Embraer jets out of Everett). Small airports also mean that you don’t wait in security, boarding, or food lines at concessions for as long. The airport is one of the most stressful parts of flying and small airports make it better. When we fly from SEA, from the time we walk into the airport until we check our luggage, get through security, and take about 30-45 minutes to our gate. At PAE we can do all that in less than five minutes.
Choose the right seat. NEVER fly in a middle seat. Even when flying together in a jet with 3-3 seats we sit across the aisle from each other. I have never been a fan of window seats. I hate being closed in and having to get across two people to use the restroom. And the older I get the more that happens ?. On a wide-body jet, you have another choice to make but that depends on the seating configuration. If you have never been there, allow me to introduce you to Seat Guru. You don’t need to check it for every flight but you do need to go there before you fly on a wide-body jet. That will show you the configuration of the seats. For instance, in this seating chart from a British Air 777, you can see that the top section (that starts with the green seats) is Premium Economy with 2-3-2 seating. The bottom section (they call it World Traveler) is their economy and it is 3-3-3. The best seats on this plane (outside of Business class) are the green bulkhead seats on either side of the plane. The 2 seats in the 2-3-2 configuration.- Another Seat Guru note is that as you can see, some seats are red, some green and some yellow. When you’re on the Seat Guru website and mouse over those, you get a pop-up that tells you that the reds are seats to stay away from and why the yellows are cautionary. The greens are considered very good for some reason. When you mouse over them, it tells you why or why not you should pick them. I do this with every flight we take unless I know the airplane well. All you will need to look up your plane is your airline, date of flight and flight number.
- Choose your seats as early as you can. People who wind up in middle seats usually buy their tickets at the last minute. I can tell you that the last time I flew in a middle seat was when my Dad was sick and I bought a ticket using miles to get down to help my brother deal with a bad situation.
The differences between international and domestic economy
Typical International Economy cabin on an international flight. Note the 2-4-2 configuration.
When you fly international for the first time you will find that it is decidedly not like flying economy domestically. To start there is about a 90% chance you will get a meal. Especially on foreign carriers. And on the foreign carriers, it will be a warm meal. You also have some kind of entertainment system. There may be some other little perks you can get but this will vary by airline. Some include seat assignments for free, some include one checked bag. Pay attention when booking. Watch for anything that says, “info” and click it. The more you know about your flight the better. I am going to do another post (I just decided this one is too long) on how I book our airfare.
What do you get with Premium Economy and is it worth it?
Delta’s Premium Economy Seat
When you decide to pay the additional $$$ and move up to Premium Economy (PE) you get a few nice extras. One is the seat. Your PE seat will look much like the ones you walk by in First Class of a domestic flight. A little wider and a little more legroom. Unlike most domestic First Class, the seat may recline a little further and you may have a leg rest that pops out when you do. Kind of like your La-Z-Boy recliner at home. So it should be easier to fall asleep.
If you are flying with a partner or a spouse, do your best to get one of those two seats on the side of the plane in a 2-3-2 configuration that I mentioned above. That way if you have the window seat, the only person you need to bother when you need a restroom break is your partner.
Flying in PE may also get you expedited check-in, earlier boarding, a better meal, a free checked bag or an amenity kit. The area of the cabin you are sitting in will be smaller than the economy section. Usually a LOT smaller. And there will be one or two dedicated flight attendants for this section so you should get better service. It should also make the flight a little quieter. Since PE costs more than Economy, many families with kids won’t be flying in that section which will further help you get some sleep on the flight.
Is it worth the extra dollars?
The price difference between economy and premium economy will depend on the flight you are taking. For instance, here’s the price on our next flight to Europe, a non-stop going from Seattle to Amsterdam on Delta.
- Business Class (Delta One) $2,680 per person
- Premium Economy (Premium Select) $1842 per person
- Economy (International Main Cabin) $1,135 per person
We are flying Business Class using a voucher we had from a canceled flight in December. If we were going to fly this flight and we weren’t going to be in Business, it would be worth it to us to pay the additional $707 to move up. Especially if I could snag one of those two seats in a 2-3-2 configuration. It would be worth it to me to get rid of the middle seat. Especially during COVID. I should add that some airlines (including Delta) now charge more for “Comfort Seats” with a little extra legroom. That might just be an exit row or a fully dedicated section. All of that will depend on the route and plane you will be flying. Again, check Seat Guru…and hope they don’t change your plane the day of the flight.
Airplane travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo. – Al Gore