60 Days And Counting

Today we hit 60 days on the countdown to sail away for the World Cruise.  Time is beginning to click away quickly.  Before you know it we will be heading out of the harbor at Port Everglades toward destinations all over the world.  But before then, we will do a back-to-back cruise (14 days) on the Sapphire Princess to the Mexican Riviera.  This should help us get our sea legs back in good shape.  On November 27th we will board the Sapphire.  We are looking forward to seeing many of our friends that are part of the Sapphire crew.

Trivia

VISA

We have been chipping away at all the little trivial items in preparation for this cruise.  Went online to the Australian government’s website and obtained our Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) for this trip.  It is valid for 12 months and is good for multiple entries.  The ship will be obtaining VISAs for all passengers for Cambodia, Togo, Ghana, Indonesia, and Mozambique.  We previously obtained our VISA for India.  All the other countries don’t require advance travel authorization or a VISA.

Internet

Started thinking about Internet access for the trip.  Since we are Princess Elite Captain’s Circle members, we each will get 1000 minutes of Internet time broken down by segment.  Realizing that we will be posting on this blog often, we began to look for additional time through Princess.  To our surprise, Princess Cruises offers substantially discounted Internet minutes for World Cruise passengers to purchase.  So, we purchased one of their 1100 minute packages to argument our normal complimentary time. 

Shipping versus Excess Baggage

There are lots of personal items we want to take with us on the cruise.  As we keep adding things, of course the weight continues to increase.  We estimate that it would be nice to carry about 50 pounds of additional items on the flight from home to our port of embarkation (Fort Lauderdale).  The cost for these items by the airline is $100.  But, we can ship 50 pounds by UPS for $63.  So, we will most likely ship our items by UPS on or about January 3, 2011, to the timeshare in Florida where we will spend a few days prior to sailing.  It would be nice if Princess provided baggage shipping similar to what Holland America provides their world cruise passengers.

Shopping for Shoes

Walking about in 38 ports of call on this cruise will put a strain on the old feet.  For many months we have looked at what is really the best shoe for all this walking we plan to do.  After much research and trial we settled on the MBT Sport 2 which is specifically designed to absorb the impact of walking.  Cindy also has added a pair of Helle Comfort dress shoes of evening wear.

Finalized Shore Excursions

After much thought, we finalized our list of excursions and reserved them online. There are plenty of places along this route that we have visited several times previously. And, many we may never visit again, so we decided to book as much as possible--at least what we could afford!!. Below is a list of things we have reserved. Two of the shore excursions are 3-day events off the ship. Those are the Taj Mahal and the Safari in Kruger National Park and Shishangeni Lodge.

Motu Islet Beach - Moorea, French Polynesia Date: Feb 10

City Drive/Cleland Wildlife Park - Adelaide, Australia Date: Feb 25

Elephant Kraal - Bangkok (Laem Chabang), Date: Mar 10

City Drive/Chinatown/Orchid Garden - Singapore, Singapore Date: Mar 13

Cellular Jail/Aberdeen Bazaar Tuk - Andaman Islands, India/Andaman Date: Mar 16

Delhi / Agra / Taj Mahal - (3-day India land excursion)
Cochin, India Date: Mar 20

Grand Mosque & Bait Al Zubair - Muscat (Mina Qaboos), Oman Date: Mar 25

At The Top: Burj Khalifa - Dubai, United Arab Emirates Date: Mar 26

Kruger: Shishangeni Lodge Camp -(3-day Safari) - Maputo, Mozambique Date: Apr 06

Table Mountain - Cape Town, South Africa Date: Apr 11

Cape Of Good Hope - Cape Town, South Africa Date: Apr 12

Slavery,Voodoo & Zangebeto Dances - Lome, Togo Date: Apr 20

Pink Lake Of Retba - Dakar, Senegal Date: Apr 25

Rabat (city tour) - Casablanca, Morocco Date: Apr 30

Monaco/Monte Carlo (city tour) - Monte Carlo, Monaco Date: May 05