A month since the last post and I really haven't done much more about either of our upcoming holidays. It's really too early to do much for the UK / Baltic one next year - way too early to book flights and hotels and anyway none of that can happen until we decide exactly when we're going to be there and where we want to go. And that in turn is at least partly driven by when and where any interesting game conventions might be happening - for Paul of course. I have started looking at the (thousands of!) places we could visit, but Paul won't really start to hear about gaming conventions for a few months yet.
We're now almost certainly going on the Fiji - New Zealand cruise in November, but again, there's not a lot of planning to be done.
I've already booked a shore excursion in Noumea as there isn't a lot of choice there - we're going to go on a Segway ride through the botanic gardens. Not sure about what we'll do in Fiji - if you're a beach person there are many many options but I just want to have a look around and learn a little about the country. Those sorts of tours are a little harder to come by, but I'll find something - I think we're most likely to go for something like this one.
There are only three ports in New Zealand on this cruise, and we're pretty much settled on what we're going to do in each of them. In Auckland we're just going to wander around town again. In Wellington we're going to walk from the port down to the Te Papa Museum and have a really good look through the museum, and then maybe wander into the city. And in Tauranga - we're actually going to take a tour to Rotorua and look at the boiling mud! There are some private tours that go there, and also ship's tours, or of course we could just drive there - I'm leaning towards the private ones like this one but again there's no huge rush to sort this out.
Really though, my intention on this cruise is to do as little as possible as often as possible. There are eight sea days and we've got a balcony cabin - I plan to read many books and generally laze around in a dedicated fashion!
And, since the cruise starts and finishes in Sydney, the only other thing we need to do is work out getting there and back from Canberra. And, this is a no-brainer this time; we'll almost certainly catch a bus and let the bus driver do all the hard work. We could hire a car but Avis is still charging a one-way fee between Canberra and Sydney which still really annoys me!
