When I started writing this post it was "All of a sudden, today it's only 75 days until Paul's birthday cruise starts." Now it's 50 days to go, and I'm finally finishing it.....
Anyway, pretty much everything is sorted for Paul's birthday cruise. As I said before, the advantage of cruising from Sydney is the way you can avoid having to fly, with all the dramas of luggage weight limits and flight delays and everything else that goes along with flying. (Please don't get me started on the absolute mess Qantas has made of my trip to Auckland in December - all I can say is it's a good thing I decided to blow some money on renewing my Qantas Club membership, because I'm going to be spending more time than I want to in the Sydney one!)
The retirement I mentioned in the last post is looking more and more unlikely - mine that is; Paul is still pretty certain to be retiring some time next year. And unfortunately the lovely long cruise home is also looking unlikely - I still won't have enough leave, and the money is going to defeat us unless I can keep working.
So, the new plan is still to go to England again and spend a week or two there first. My main aim is not to break a bone while I'm there; I'd really like to not keep up my current 100% record!! Paul has some ideas of places to see while we're there, and I'm cool with wherever we go as long as I get to spend a little more time in London - there are a number of places I missed first and second time around.
Then, we'll still be hopping onto the same cruise ship at Southampton - the Emerald Princess, still leaving on 28 September 2016. However, instead of 49 days to Sydney, we'll be leaving the ship in Singapore, after 30 days, and flying home from there. Princess has a sale on at the moment, and even though it's only for new bookings, they allowed me to take advantage of the sale because they have the cruise to Singapore set up as a completely different cruise from the full trip to Sydney - hence, a "new booking". The new price was a surprisingly good deal, and it reduces the whole holiday to a (hopefully) manageable budget - as long as I go back to work afterwards - while still getting us to some of the most interesting places on the itinerary.
Not much more to say now, and based on my recent performance with updating the blog, I expect my next post to be from the balcony of the Diamond Princess on 29 September this year, waiting to leave for New Zealand!
