Happy New Year!
If all you had to go on was the picture above, you might guess that we were back home in Montana. But this was just our layover on the way to our destination. Here, this might be a better clue:
We had a nice, long layover at the Zurich airport (“Flughafen” is German for “airport”) on our way to start our two-week long trip to Spain and Portugal from December 8-23, 2019. Our itinerary included stops in Madrid, Toledo, Lisbon, Coimbra, Porto, the Douro River Valley in northern Portugal, and Salamanca.
The second half of this trip was planned to be a week-long cruise on the Douro River with Viking River Cruises. This was our seventh trip with Viking.
While we did stay on two different Viking ships (the Helgrim and the Hemming) on the Douro, these ships never cruised on the river while we were onboard. This was due to storms (the one that hit us was named Elsa) dumping rain on Europe that turned the river into a whitewater torrent, making it unsafe to sail. Elsa and its successor were apparently a big deal, judging by the newspaper headline, “Biblical floods put Europe on red alert after extreme weather leaves at least 8 dead.”
In spite of this setback, we had a wonderful time on our trip. Our next set of posts will recap some of the highlights. Stay tuned!
Halfway There Travelers 
I’m staying tuned!
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You really make the best of things. Good for you.
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