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.
