Day 1 - to Sydney and getting onboard the Voyager of the Seas

Onboard around 2pm, they were set up for really long queues but there was just a slow steady flow of people boarding when we got on   We didn't have to wait for our cabin to be ready; they were all opened up by the time we got onboard.
Spent the afternoon doing the usual things - exploring the ship and going to the muster drill (which was pretty low tech compared to some.)
While we were heading off to Sydney we saw a Facebook post from a former workmate of Paul's (Sheree) - who has moved away from Canberra but has stayed in touch.  Based on some of her posts it seemed pretty likely that she and her partner and children were coming on the same cruise - and they are.  We ran into them in the shopping promenade onboard - had a happy reunion and then promised to meet up again during the coming two weeks.
Finishing this on Sunday:
We decided just to go to the Windjammer buffet for dinner; the food was perfectly acceptable for 'cruise ship buffet' style of eating.
We didn't bother with staying out for the sail-away - it was a long day, we both got a touch of the sun and of course I was a bit under the influence of Travacalm.  However, just as we were about to nod off to sleep the phone rang and it was my cousin Donna who it turns out is also onboard - we're going to try to catch up in person today.

Leaving tomorrow!

Unbelievable - it's almost 4 weeks since I posted anything here, and all of a sudden we're leaving on a cruise tomorrow  :-)
I've got the day off today, and a long to-do list - boring stuff like doing the last of the washing, finishing my packing, stocking up on groceries for Adam while we're away (particularly heavy / frozen stuff that he'll have a hard time getting with only the trike as transport).  But, this holiday is pretty much all organised - we just have to get ourselves to Civic tomorrow in time for the 9am bus to Sydney, and from then on in, it's all under control!
As far as next year's holiday goes, there's not a lot of movement on that front.  I haven't booked the travel insurance yet; I really must do that soon.  Qantas definitely got the money and issued our tickets, and I've already paid to request specific seats.  And, on both flights we managed to snag the seat that's regularly called the best economy seat on the Qantas A380 - seat 71D (and the one beside it of course).  They let you request this seat for 'only' their standard fee for seat pre-booking, not the outrageous prices they charge for exit row seats, and it's actually better than an exit row seat in my opinion.  Let's just hope that they don't steal them from me - they don't actually guarantee that you'll get the seat you pay for, although they do generously (!!) promise that if they have to take it from you they'll refund the money you paid to book it.
Apart from that though, next year's holiday is still waiting to be planned  :-)
Anyway, the next few posts should be shots of the beautiful Voyager of the Seas, and some lovely sights in the South Pacific and New Zealand!

Flights booked!!

We've taken the big plunge and booked the flights to and from London. The Qantas fares on sale now are just too good to miss - I had allowed $6000 in our budget for two return flights to London and the actual price was $3825.72.  I've paid by BPAY to avoid the outrageous fees Qantas charges for credit card bookings - $30 per person!!  I cannot imagine anyone writing a computer system so complex that it costs 30 cents to process a booking, let alone $30.

Anyway, we'll be leaving Sydney for London on 11 August 2014 and then leaving London to come home on 22 September - basically 6 weeks away from home. 2 weeks of that is on a cruise, but the rest of it is yet to be planned - something to keep me busy for the next 10 months or so!

My next two steps:

• Go off and book some travel insurance.  
• Panic about our money for the next couple of days until Qantas (hopefully) tells me that the BPAY worked :-)

Still dreaming about holidays

39 days until our November cruise - finally I can say "we're going on a cruise next month"!!  And, I don't think I've done anything more about it than I had the last time I posted.  Really, as I said last time, there's nothing much to do anyway for a cruise from Sydney - just pack and go!

Next year's holiday - travelling around England and doing the Baltic cruise - is finally starting to seem a bit more real, although the scope is still not 100% certain. 

I spent some time a few weeks ago doing up a trial itinerary, just to see whether it's even going to be possible to see the places on our list in the time we have (turns out, mostly yes!) and to get an idea of whether we'll even be able to afford it.  That's a harder question to answer, but assuming that neither of us decides we've had enough and retires from work, and assuming that Tony Abbott doesn't sack us both, and also assuming that the Aussie dollar doesn't slide too much further in comparison with the pound and the US dollar, then it still looks like a goer.
We have already booked and paid a deposit on the cruise.  Fortunately, we pay for it in Aussie dollars and as far as I can see the contract doesn't let them increase the price even though the actual value of what we have agreed to pay has been slowly sinking in comparison with the US dollar - which of course is the cruise line's preferred currency.  When I booked it back in April, the cruise plus pre-paid gratuities was just under $5,900 Aussie dollars.  Today, to book the same category of cabin and pre-paid gratuities would cost just over $7,300 of those same dollars.  Glad we booked early  :-)

So, the cruise is fine, and I was thinking about leaving the final 'go or no-go' decision until next year.  Trouble is, Qantas currently have a sale on for flights to Europe and the UK next year.  Before the sale started they were quoting me $3308 each for the return flight to London, but the sale price is $1813 each.  This is really cheap for Qantas and in fact is pretty cheap for any flight to London any time.  This price is so good that that it's really tempting to book now, but that means making all those decisions I was hoping to ignore for a few more months - settling on the exact travel dates, buying travel insurance etc.  And it also means making the big leap of faith that the Aussie dollar isn't going to sink too much further - otherwise we'll be staying somewhere in the English countryside eating noodles for 6 weeks  :-)
It's still a few days until I can book the flight - they're taking return bookings for 19 September 2014 now and we'd want to come back around 23 September - so I've got a little while yet before I need to get serious about this.

99 days to go

This time last year we were down to a few days until our lovely UK/USA holiday started; now I'm counting days until the next two.  Well, to be honest, I've been counting days ever since I booked them, because that's what I do  :-)
99 days until we get onto the Voyager of the Seas in November for a couple of weeks of bliss.  This is real relaxation; the hardest work is getting to Sydney and then the rest of the time as I keep saying, I fully intend to do as little as possible as often as possible.  We don't really need to do a lot of preparation for this one.  There's no flights and therefore no worries about size or weight of bags or whether they'll try to confiscate Paul's gel-packs for his insulin or any of those things that can be a real drama for overseas travel.  Just get a taxi to into the city, a bus to Sydney, a train down to Circular Quay, dump our bags and climb onboard!
And, it's just over a year from now until the the Baltic cruise.  But, this one is going to be completely different.  When we're doing both a cruise and land travel on a holiday, so far we've usually finished with a cruise - it's a nice way to properly rest and relax to end a holiday before the long flight home.  This time though, it looks like timing-wise it will be best to do the cruise first, so the land travel is mostly in September - so it's not school / summer holiday time in the UK.  And, given that it's a Baltic cruise, it's not going to be all that relaxing anyway - Baltic cruises tend to visit a lot of ports with very few sea days for recovery, and this one is no different.  I've been looking at other people's blogs describing their Baltic cruises and I just can't wait!  Although to be honest, with the $AUD the way it is and work the way it is, we aren't making any final payments just yet - at the moment every cent we've spent on this cruise (basically, I've paid a deposit and booked a drinks package) is refundable so if our financial situation changes dramatically we can still back out of it without a loss.  Of course, that's apart from losing the chance to see such lovely places!

How time flies .....

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!

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!