Holiday plans slowly moving forward

The lotto win hasn't happened yet, so sadly the Hawaii to Sydney cruise isn't on the cards  :-(
I have booked a (much cheaper) cruise in November this year, but Paul isn't all that keen - he doesn't mind the idea of a cruise but he thinks we should be saving all our money for next year's holiday.  He has a good point, but I'm really going to need a holiday by November!  Anyway, we've got until early June before we have to reach an agreement - after that we'd lose our deposit.
In the last posting I said that we had booked a Baltic Cruise with Princess - well, yesterday I cancelled it.  The main reason we picked that particular cruise was because one of the ports of call was Gdansk in Poland - Paul and I are both quite keen to go there.  But, on Thursday night we got an eMail from Princess cruises saying that they had completely revised the itinerary and it's now longer going to Gdansk. That turns it into just another Baltic cruise, and a comparatively expensive one too.  So, we cancelled it.
Further research tells me that there are no cruises that stop anywhere in Poland in our available time-frame next year - any attempt by me to take leave in the first 6 months of any year is doomed to failure, and the only ones I can find are in May and June 2014. So, unfortunately Poland goes onto the back-burner for now - there's a vague plan in our minds to do some land travel in Europe in a couple of years time, and we'll make sure to get there then.
In the meantime, we still want to do a Baltic cruise, and I've already got another one booked.  We will actually be leaving the same port (Southampton) on the same day (16 August 2014) - but now we're going on the Celebrity Eclipse.  We've never sailed with Celebrity before but by all reports they're a bit of a step up quality-wise from any of the cruise lines we've been on so far.  This cruise has a very similar itinerary - almost all the Baltic cruises will do some variation on the same basic set of cities - but we will at least get to see Berlin (which wasn't on the Princess itinerary).
Now that's sorted - hopefully! - the next step is to get into research about where we want to go in the UK and what we want to see and do.  From our first trip we know there are a few places we want to go back to, and we already have a list of some other places we definitely want to see, but I keep coming across more and more things to do.  And unfortunately there's only so much time (and money) we can spend.  The current plan is to identify maybe 3 or 4 different cities that are in the general area of things we want to see, and base ourselves in each place for a few days. Some places I expect we'll have to hire a car; in others we can use public transport.  What we're definitely not doing this time is going on an organised coach tour; it was a good way to get a big picture look at some of the UK, but this time we want some control over how long we spend in each place - not to mention that we want to be able to stay inside if it's raining!

Final post about the NZ cruise - and the next holiday.

Well obviously we got home - a few weeks ago actually.
The last couple of days on the cruise followed the pattern of all the others - laze around, lose money at the Casino, eat, read, rinse and repeat  :-)  Just what I want a cruise to be.
However, having said that, I probably wouldn't cruise with Carnival again and it's not because their ships keep breaking down  :-)  There was just a bit too much bingo, karaoke and 'comedians' and not quite enough interesting entertainment of the informative type for me.  Not saying it was bad - it was a really interesting itinerary and I'm astounded that they're not doing any NZ cruises next year - just that there are other cruise lines that suit us better.

On to the next holiday.  If we win the Lotto, we're going to go to Hawaii in October, spend some time there and then cruise home on the Celebrity Millenium.  And, whether we win the Lotto or not, we're going on a Baltic cruise next August on the Emerald Princess.  I booked it this morning, and now I have 519 days to organise everything that has to happen on the cruise, plus a few weeks in the UK before and/or after the cruise.  Pretty sure that's enough time  :-)

New Zealand Cruise Day 11 - Fjordland

Today the ship took us through Dusky Sound, Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound.  No-one seems all that clear on why they're called Sounds when technically they really are fjords.  Probably Captain Cook didn't realise this at the time and no-one wants to correct him now  :-)

We cruised through these same fjords on the Diamond Princess back in December 2008 - it mostly rained that day.  Today it didn't rain but there was also very little sun.  Apparently Fjordland is the wettest place in New Zealand and one of the wettest on earth, so I guess it's expecting a bit much to hope for the sun to shine.

The scenery is simply amazing - huge sea cliffs and glacial vallies all of which have been photographed a million times by people who are much smarter with their camera than I am, so I'm not going to post any here.

There was a naturalist on the ship - he gave a few talks which I didn't go to; I kept missing them as they're not well advertised.  He also gave a running commentary today.  It was mostly just telling us which particular waterfall or island we were looking at, but he did cover a few other things as well - for example he showed us the glacial valley where they rediscovered the kakapo after thinking it was extinct.

We left Milford Sound on schedule around 5pm, but then when we were at dinner we realised that we could still see land (which we weren't expecting) and the ship wasn't moving.  Then we went out on deck after dinner and it was pretty clear that we were still just outside Milford Sound.  An hour or so later they explained what was going on - someone had been taken ill and they were concerned that they'd need to evacuate them off the ship.  However, they decided that this isn't necessary, so we finally got underway.

Only three more nights and two more days to go  :-(

New Zealand Cruise Day 10 - Dunedin

Large ships can't dock close to Dunedin - we had to dock at Port Chalmers.  Paul wasn't feeling 100% this morning so I went off into Dunedin by myself.  I didn't have anything planned because I was going to do the Citywalksz guided walk - but as I said, the MP3 player died before we got to Akaroa.  I'm going to write them a stern letter about their quality control.
As it happens, there's a huge 'flea market' in central Dunedin today, so there were heaps of things to look at and buy.  I could have gone on other tours once I got into the city, but I just wandered around looking at some of the obvious sights, then wandered back to the ship.

An old friend - the Dawn Princess - is also in port here today, as is a smaller cruise ship called the Caledonian Sky.  The Dawn Princess is docked right beside us - as you can see above - but I didn't see the Caledonian Sky.  It may have been able to dock actually at Dunedin as it's quite a small ship - only 116 passengers as opposed to the 2,000-odd (each) on the Dawn Princess and the Carnival Spirit.
We have now sailed out of Dunedin - tomorrow we see the Fiords and then sail for home.

The First Presbyterian Church - a beautiful old building.  This and a number of others reminded me very much of England.

The Dunedin railway station - apparently voted one of the three most beautiful in the world, and I'm not really surprised

It was a beautiful warm and sunny day today but in the afternoon the clouds started rolling in over the hills - as you can see above and below.  It was quite a creepy sight to me, although I suppose they're used to it here.  By the time we got to the mouth of the harbour, it was completely cloudy and quite cool

A collection of towel animals prepared by our room steward.  I'm not at all sure what they're all meant to be!!

New Zealand Cruise Day 9 - Akaroa

Yes, as usual, updating a day late.

Akaroa is about 65 km south of Christchurch, and since the earthquake in 2011 it's where the cruise ships have mostly had to dock instead of Christchurch.  If you want to, you can still do shore excursions to Christchurch from Akaroa, but it's quite a long day.  We decided - like many others - to just look around Akaroa.  It's obviously a tourist town, with or without cruise ships.  We had a nice time just wandering around, then we had lunch at one of the local restaurants - fish and chips and salad - $18.90 NZ each and worth every cent of it.
One big disappointment - my 'Citywalksz' MP3 player has died - so my plans to get a guided tour of the town didn't come to anything.

 Above is the WWI memorial.  They were planning to do repair and renovation work when the earthquake hit and caused more damage.  It's now fenced off until they can raise funds to do all the necessary repairs.

 This lighthouse was originally at the opening of the harbour but has now been renovated and moved to a spot nearer to Akaroa.

 The seagulls are completely unafraid as in any tourist town.  This bloke came over to say hello but left as soon as he realised we weren't going to feed him!

View of the Carnival Spirit from the jetty at Akaroa.

New Zealand Cruise Day 8 - Wellington

Yet again, updating a day late!

The ship was docked in Wellington, right beside Westpac Stadium, quite close to downtown Wellington.
Today I went on a shore excursion called Exploring Windy Wellington.  Basically they took us out in these little 4WD minivans, up to New Zealand's biggest wind farm - I think they said it has 68 wind turbines and could power Wellington by itself:

 Lots of steep windy roads- not much more than gravel tracks at the end - but once we got up there the views were spectacular.  We also went down to a beach and saw some seals and an old lighthouse.

The Leaning Lighthouse was built back in the early 1900s and it took three years even though it's not particularly large.  They had to carry the cement out in rowboats!  It was really important though because there were numerous shipwrecks on this part of the coast, including the SS Penguin which was New Zealand's worst ever shipwreck.
Paul didn't come on this tour, but he did go for a walk downtown.  We've agreed we'd like to come back here and spend some more time - there's a lot to see and do here.
Now, it's off to Akaroa

New Zealand Cruise Day 7 - Napier

Yet again posting yesterday's story today, but it's not my fault this time - the ship's internet access was incredibly bad last night and in the end, I gave up.  Anyway, here the story of 6 Feb 2013:

Really bumpy ride overnight - it was supposed to be calm seas down this side of the coast but it was far from calm - strong winds and lots of crashing into waves etc.
After we woke up we realised that one of the loud bangs wasn't a wave - a piece of metal from a balcony above had fallen off and landed on the lifeboat beside our balcony.It doesn't look all that big does it:

until you realise that it's one of these vertical privacy screens - it could have made a real mess if it had fallen onto someone on the promenade below:

We caught a shuttle into Napier this morning.  Napier is called the "Art Deco" capital of New Zealand - 98% of the city was destroyed in an earthquake and subsequent fires in 1931, and a lot of the rebuilding was done in the Art Deco style.
The weather today was quite cool but not rainy.  We've got two three more ports of call yet - Wellington, Akaroa (where they stop for Christchurch these days as the port in Christchurch hasn't adequately recovered from the earthquake yet) and Dunedin - as well as a day cruising the Fiords, and we're hearing that the weather for this later part of the trip will be warmer and dryer which is good for us.
This afternoon we did a load of washing.  Now we have a lot of clean clothes, but we're going to have to stand in the queue at Guest Services tomorrow and ask them to remove all the incorrect multiple charges off our account.  Two loads of washing but we got charged for about 6, and one lot of drying charged about 8 times!
Tonight we went to the Carnival Spirit's 'speciality restaurant' - the Nouveau Steakhouse - to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.  It was quite a good meal but the ambience wasn't as good as P&O's 'Salt' restaurant.  The problem is the location on the ship - for two reasons.  First, there's  real shudder at the back of the ship, so our seats - and us - were shaking the whole time.  Second, there's an atrium that rises from deck 3 right up to deck 10 - and the restaurant is around the top of the atrium on Deck 10.  The thing is that noises from deck 3 echo right up to the restaurant - in this case an live band with a lot of people cheering and shouting.  I don't want to make it sound like it was terrible, just that it you go to a restaurant like that for a special occasion and you generally don't want those sorts of sound effects.  However the food was delicious, which is the most important thing!