Cruising the Mediterranean

My name is Faye Combs, and I live in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, called Bellevue.  Over a decade ago I walked into a travel agency in Bellevue, and that's where I saw that beautiful welcoming smile the first time.  If you know Linda McClain, you know what I'm talking about.  And she has been our travel agent ever since.  I can enumerate many reasons why we remain loyal to Linda even after her moving to New York, but the Number 1 reason is her dedication to her clients' satisfaction with their vacation plans.  Linda is passionate about travel, and that makes her passionate about what she does.

On September 19, 2008, we embarked on a big adventure.  My husband had traveled to Europe in years past, but it was my first time.  Linda was so excited for me you would have thought it was her going instead of me.  She proceeded to book us on the brand new Splendor, one of Carnival's ships, with an outstanding Mediterranean itinerary.  We flew to Rome and stayed there from September 20 till September 23.  On September 23 we began the next phase of our trip - cruising the Mediterranean.  We visited Naples - Sicily - Tuscany - Barcelona, Spain - Venice - Dubrovnik, Croatia and were scheduled to visit Cannes, France, however, we hit some bad weather and didn't get to go there.  Cannes has a tiny port, and we would have had to take a tender to shore. We met with a storm the night before our anticipated visit, and the Captain of our ship reluctantly deemed it unsafe for us to go ashore there because of the high waves and winds.  I wanted to see the French Riviera, but quite frankly, it was not a big deal as we had seen and done so much already we welcomed a relaxing day at sea.

My favorite place that we visited was Tuscany.  My husband, Michael, is a lawyer, and he deals with a lot of stress on a daily basis.  I had not seen him look that relaxed in a very long time.  There is something about Tuscany that draws you in, lulls you, and makes you feel at peace.

Have you ever been to a really fancy restaurant where they have a tasting menu?  That is exactly what I compared this cruise to - a tasting menu.  You get a taste of a lot of places, and if you decide to go back, you can make a decision based on your experiences on the cruise.  That being said, we, of course, would go back to Tuscany, rent a villa, and see if we could recapture the peace we found during our short visit.

I highly recommend this mode of seeing a lot of places in a short amount of time.  You only have to unpack once unless you have a pre-cruise and/or post-cruise stay (we did).  It makes the travel so pleasant.

I will continue to use Linda McClain Travel Services because she always pleases, and I have the utmost confidence in her.

Faye Combs