He and I have embraced a lot of new things in retirement, but none more so than travel. We love it, but not just any travel...."cruising" is one of our preferred modes of transport.
In corporate life, he spent years traveling the world 'first-class' with chauffeured limos and 5 star hotels in most destinations, and we have done those trips together too. But traveling through airports, no longer holds any appeal for us, we try to best manage this by flying on daytime flights or better still, by completely avoiding it.
Our next trip is to Canada and Alaska with Holland America! How then do you get to Canada avoiding an 'airport'? We are traveling with Holland America on the Oosterdam leaving from Sydney....wow! We will board the ship, go straight to our room, unpack and then go up to the "crows-nest", glass of Champaign in hand and wave good-buy to Australia for 5 weeks. . After that we will be welcomed at a special dinner and then pop off to a show! We will wake refreshed in the morning ready to explore a new port! Sure beats the airport experience.
On this trip we will be visiting South Pacific islands before making our way to Canada and Alaska. So we will need clothing that caters for both climates. And therein lies the dilemma. How does one take clothing for both and not end up carrying/pulling luggage that is just too heavy!
Solution is to find clothes that can be worn in layers. You need items that can be dressed up or down. I have a particular favourite "black dress" that I can wear around a pool or pop on with a colourful shawl and high heels and I'm fine for dinner! Accessorising is the key, far better to take some lovely accessories rather than a dress for this and a dress for that. - Black, white, navy and taupe are great colours and go with just about everything.I have recently found a wonderful Australian brand of clothing - "Mela Purdie" and their catch line is "clothes that travel with you"! They just have so many basics that you can dress-up or down. These clothes have 'style' plus.
