I have those! I like them very much. I hope you do too.
Just what we need… fewer flights going into the holiday travel season 
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Won’t the corporate airlines put pressure on the government to solve this dilemma?
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Hmm - new Vionic slippers arrived today and the Relax II style is a bit different from the old Relax style. It covers more of the top of the foot and has extra cross cross. At least if they accidentally open they won’t come off, as has happened to me on occasion. I’ll wear them around a bit but likely the old pretty ones will be going on the trip. Unless the CC consensus is the new ones would look better!
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I vote for “old faithful”
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I applied for my visa for australia, hit the submit button, and had that visa approval via email in less than one minute! Doing the NZ one today…actually DH has all of my information for that, and he is getting that done.
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Leaving tomorrow on our long anticipated Mediterranean cruise
Upgraded our flights to business on the way, first time in anything other than economy. Very excited!
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@deb922 - Safe travels and enjoy your trip!
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Hope your trip is wonderful from the time you leave home til you arrive back.
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Hope you have a wonderful time!
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Would love to hear the details upon return - that will likely be our next cruise after the London/Paris one. I’m just having trouble find the exact one that I want that spends more time in Croatia But still hits the western coast of Italy.
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Enjoy your trip!!
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Although I passed it a zillion times, today is the first time I visited the Tenement Museum on the corner of Orchard and Delancey Sts. (Lower East Side/Chinatown, Manhattan). This is the tour we did: https://www.tenement.org/tour/100-years-apart/
Where a German-Jewish-American family and a Chinese-American family lived soon after immigration, in 1863 and 1963, respectively. Really interesting! Perhaps we were in the building where my dad and his sisters were born in the 1920s. Highly recommended.
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@oldmom4896 -S and I visited the tenement museum some years ago and I agree , it is definitely worth seeing.
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Ditto.
I always take visitors to NYC to the tenement museum. Because they have different properties, it doesn’t really get old!
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I thought I’d give a small update on our recent Viking ocean cruise because I think someone asked how we liked it compared to our previous river cruises. Sorry I guess I got a little wordy 
We are big fans of the Viking model so I thought we would like our Mediterranean cruise.
We really liked the ocean. Pluses included the more spacious room with balcony. My husband, an introvert, liked spending time in a room that was large enough to move around in compared to a river boat.
We liked the variety of food options, found the food good but we are no gourmets. We ate at all the venues, I found that I liked eating dinner at the sit down restaurant. My husband liked the buffet, we both loved the gelato station! The speciality restaurants were very good.
I got a facial and spent one day at the thermal spa. Very nice.
We found the excursions to be the quality we found of our river cruises. We like to do optional excursions as we found them to be smaller, and we were there to tour the area. Lots of cruisers are more interested in the ship and what it offers. We used the ocean as more of a river model so see as much as we could.
One thing we kept hearing was that the ocean was less friendly, less communal than the river boats. We found that the ocean was just as friendly and we met tons of people on the boat. We were open to sharing tables at dinner and met many interesting people. Also all day excursions will have you meeting your fellow travelers.
We did not book another cruise, my husband wants to wait and regroup. I think we will probably veer to another ocean cruise. Maybe another river if the right itinerary strikes our fancy. Air travel feels daunting right now! My husband also had a few issues that losing a few pounds will probably help him but that’s his issue and not mine! We don’t have to be as busy as we were either. Maybe accept that we would like a more leisurely paced trip.
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Thanks for the report! We are currently driving our 5 hours home from the airport after our first Viking River cruise. I’ve been saying that river cruises seem to be for the people where the destinations/excursions are the primary factor, the ship’s amenities are secondary. Ocean cruises seem to be in reverse, especially other cruise lines. The ones who are there for the pools, casino, shows, etc.
H and I definitely fall into the former category, so we enjoyed our cruise. However, for an introvert it was sometimes tiresome to always have to engage at mealtimes with others. With my parents there, at least we were a table of 4 and breakfast and lunches were often just us. And everyone who sat with us were lovely people! Just sometimes I would rather just eat by myself in silence. I wish they had an introvert section! 
And I also had a hard time being served so much. I identify more with the crew than a passenger. My room doesn’t need to be cleaned twice a day! The crew was really nice and H and I told a few of them how much we appreciated them (along with the standard extra tip/named in review). They seem to brighten at that. H is really good at this and I try to follow his example.
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We also hit the jackpot with air travel! On the long 8 hour flight stretch, we all wanted aisle seats, and at some point they changed our initial seats, so we were close, but not in the same row. H had the middle row of 4 seats to himself. I was also in the middle. There was someone on the other end, but the two middle were open. My parents were on the side section, but each had the entire 3 seats to themselves! It was awesome!
We did have to connect through Paris with only 50 minutes of time in between the start of boarding. I was stressed getting through passport control and the bus shuttle, but we made it in 45 minutes. Time for the bathroom and to buy a drink
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We went on a Viking Ocean Cruise with two other couples, although we didn’t do everything together. I am generally a friendly, talk to anyone person and found some of that, but not as much as I thought I would. Chatting on the excursions, but did not really make any “cruise friends”. It seemed there were tables for two in the buffer dining area so would allow folks to eat alone or just with their traveling partner.
DH is having a lot of health and mobility challenges so we have not booked another cruise or any other vacation unfortunately. While the Viking ship was generally accessible, there were times when the docking situation was such that he had to walk up and down the gangway and I don’t think there was any other access possible. He would not be able to do that now.
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