Doing the Paperwork

"I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list." ~ Susan Sonntag

Our world cruise is less than a year away and not only do we need to be ready to go, I need to make sure the world is ready for us to come! 

Our papers need to be in order. 

Our passports were new in 2019 and we have the required book format instead of a passport card. We also opted to get the non-standard 52 page one to make sure we have plenty of space. Some countries require an entire page be devoted solely to their stamp. (It was a source of surprise and mild sadness to me that not all countries actually stamped our passport in 2018.)

Princess collected and retained our passports for some parts of the 2018 world cruise. In many cases, the ship presented our documents to the local authorities to streamline the process. In other places, we had to present our passports ourselves, and let the authorities scan our fingerprints upon entering and exiting their land.

In addition to our passports, some countries on our 2021 itinerary require visas for entry. If we don't have proper documentation, Princess could deny us boarding next January without refund or recourse! I do not blame the other countries of the world for requiring us to submit information to verify our identities before allowing us to visit. Even though our intentions are nothing but good, they are all sovereign nations and have every right to control who crosses their borders.

Here are the countries for which we'll need visas or something extra:

• Australia--Piece of cake. We can register online for an ETA (Electronic Travel Authority) closer to our departure from the States. The fee is nominal (AUD$20) and we have to print out our confirmation to present before boarding in Ft. Lauderdale. 
• Indonesia--We actually don't need a visa to visit Bali. Americans receive a free entry stamp, but we must have TWO blank pages in our passports for them to stamp for entry and exit. 
• New Zealand--This is new. We didn't need an NZeTA in 2018, but we'll need one before we board this time. Once we arrive at our first port in NZ, we'll be deemed to hold a visitor's visa. It'll cost NZD$12 for the eTA and another NZD$35 at the time of application for an International Visitor Conservation & Tourism Levy.  
• Sri Lanka--Even though it's located close to India, I doubt we'll have to leap through nearly as many hoops as we did to get our Indian visa in 2017. Before we leave home, we can apply for a FREE Transit Visa to cover our one day stay.
• Jordan--A visa is required, but this friendly middle eastern country will issue all cruise passengers one without fee upon our arrival!

But passports and visas aren't the only papers we'll bring with us. We'll make photocopies of our credit cards, passports and drivers' licenses in case of loss. We'll bring our travel insurance policy and our Medicare and Supplement cards. (One of the reasons we opted for a Medicare supplement instead of Medicare Advantage is that a supplement will pay in 2nd position to our travel insurance for a medical emergency abroad.)  

 After losing some passengers on our last trip, we decided we'll bring our durable power of attorney for each other and finally make ourselves fill out an advance directive or Living Will. Though the DH and I have talked with each other about our end-of-life concerns, there's no need to burden a loved one with decisions in a crisis if we can provide a written expression of our wishes.

I don't share this to be morbid. It's just a fact of life that on a very long cruise, some passengers will... disembark sooner than others. But my grandpa used to say he'd "rather burn out than rust out!" Everyone who boards is still following a dream, still moving forward, still intent on having another excellent adventure. 

We just need to make sure our paperwork is as ready as we are! Honestly, I'm just as excited as I was in May 2017 when we stumbled on the deal for our first world cruise. Being able to run away with the DH for another incredible adventure is an unspeakable blessing and I'm grateful beyond belief. 

Lightning Strikes Twice!

"Take every chance you get in life, because some things only happen once." ~ Karen Gibbs

With respect to Ms. Gibbs, "it ain't necessarily so." I heartily endorse the first clause in that quote. It's important to grasp an adventure with both hands, but I'm here to tell you that some things--wonderful things--sometimes do happen twice!

When we did our 2018 Round the World cruise, I fully expected it would be a one-and-done trip of a lifetime. Then on board, we met couples who'd done two, five, even thirteen voyages around this beautiful blue ball. Not having been visited by the Prize Patrol, I didn't think another World Cruise was possible for us.

But that didn't stop me from dreaming about it. And researching itineraries and costs for 2021 voyages, which was my original estimate of when a world cruise might be feasible. So many offerings made me drool. I weighed the pros and cons of all-inclusive cruise lines compared to the "Pay-As-You-Go" sort. Because we aren't big drinkers, the all-inclusives mean we're paying for someone else to. And the cruise lines which provided an included excursion in each port often don't offer the sort of thing we'd like to do. (In fact, the blogger I'm currently following on this year's Viking World Cruise says the included excursions are often walking tours near the ship or generic bus trips.) And even if the excursions were unlimited (like on Regent for example,) reservations for them are based on the type and price of the stateroom a passenger booked. Chances are the excursion we'd want would have already been spoken for by the folks in more expensive quarters.

Planning our trip "a la carte" made the most sense to me. And we figured out a way to pay for it.

So in February of 2019, we booked a 97 day 2021 World Cruise on Cunard's Queen Victoria, departing from Ft. Lauderdale and ending in London. We'd sail through the Panama Canal (a first for us!), and enjoy an overnight in Sydney which promised a chance to attend an evening performance in their fabulous opera house. Hong Kong was on the map (remember this was long before the current unrest broke out) and after shooting through the Straits of Malacca, QV would turn south to round the Cape of Good Hope with stops in South Africa and Namibia before heading to London.

Then last July-August, we cruised on Cunard for the first time. The Queen Mary is a magnificent ship and the music/entertainment was absolutely to my taste. We had a wonderful time, but 3 formal nights a week proved too much for us. And I'd been assured that, if anything, the World Cruises on Cunard are even more formal. There were other things that we tolerated well enough for  21 days, but might become problematic for a longer cruise. (See  Things I didn't Love About Cunard.) And because I use supplemental O2 on flights, the intercontintental trip home from London to Missouri began to worry me. I'm required to carry 1 1/2 times battery life for the entire trip. It's not something I want to run out of.

So I started looking again.

By this time, Princess had come out with its itinerary for 2021. We could go round trip out of Florida for 111 days and avoid a long-haul flight. The voyage touches 6 continents, two of them completely new to us. There are six stops in New Zealand (four more than our last visit there) and then the Island Princess will cruise along the north shore of Australia (we skirted the south side last time). The ship will visit Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Oman (all new to us). Jordan is a repeat, but we'd have a chance to go to Petra the next time. (We visited Wadi Rum, of The Martian and Lawrence of Arabia fame in 2018.)

And then I saw the next port of call and knew I'd found the right trip for us. The Island Princess will stop in Israel. I'm a Christian, so the dream of seeing Jerusalem and Bethlehem is a long-standing one. I love visiting sacred sites, even if I don't share the faith that consecrates them. Time out of mind, humans have been reaching up, searching for that sacred Other, looking for glimpses of the infinite in a finite world. The thought of setting foot in the birthplace of my own faith, as well as the other two great monotheistic religions, brings tears to my eyes.

Plus we know we like the Princess style of cruising. I complained about too many formal nights on Cunard, but I'd miss them if we were on a less formal line that didn't have any. There will be 3 or 4 formal nights per segment on the Island Princess--rare enough that they will be special and we'll enjoy and look forward to them. And, barring the occasional ventriloquist, we enjoyed the entertainment on our 2018 World Cruise. We loved singing in the passenger choir and playing trivia with our team. We like assigned seat in the MDR. The nightly conversations and friendships we made at Table 60 was a delight. If we cruised on a line where everyone was floating from place to place we'd have basically the same introductory conversations 111 times in a row.

It was sort of a no brainer.

So we called our long-suffering travel agent (Teresa Skeim of Cruise Specialists!) and asked her what it would take to change us from Cunard to Princess for 2021. She got to work and because we were still booking quite early, we got a boatload of valuable perks:

• $1000 off the advertised fare for each of us for a $2000 savings
• $1000 per person OBC (plus $1500 from our TA for $3500 total! That'll buy a lot of excursions!)
• Free airfare to and from Ft. Lauderdale
• 4 complimentary evenings in specialty restaurants
• 4 bottles of wine (We'll have them brought to our table and share them with our tablemates!)
• Upgraded cabin location 
• Pre-paid gratuities (a $3219 value)
• Free unlimited Wifi & Internet (The Island Princess is a Medallion Class ship so it should be faster than we've experienced before and will be a real boon to this blog!)

And then because we'll be Elites in the Princess loyalty program by the time we board the Island Princess, we'll receive these extra goodies:

• Free laundry & professional cleaning (Something the DH said was a must before we sailed around the world again!)
• Shoe polishing
• Priority tender service
• Mini-bar set up in our cabin at the beginning of each segment (We can substitute soda and bottled water for the alcohol!)
• Afternoon tea upon request
• Canapes delivered to the stateroom on each formal night
• Upgraded bathroom amenities

It almost seems we got an all-inclusive for the price of an a la carte! 

Of course, I'll update you on all our preparation and plans as we get ready for this twice blessed trip of a lifetime. Just think! Only 351 more days to go!

2020 Travel Resolutions

"Life is either a daring adventure or it's nothing at all." ~ Helen Keller

I used to make resolutions at the first of the year. But they often dissolved into nothingness. For example, my resolve to keep a diary when I was a kid. Apparently, I had nothing but a bunch of January's in my past.

So now instead of resolutions, I make plans. And these are my travel plans for 2020:

January--The DH and I will make a quick overnight trip to Springfield, MO (about 100 miles away) with our friends Joy and Mike. (If you've followed this blog, you may remember them from our 2017 Alaskan cruise on the HAL Eurodam, and our excellent adventure together to view the solar eclipse totality near our town!) We have tickets to see Les Miserable.  In the past, we've enjoyed this incredible show in both London and New York. I'm sure a traveling troop is still a "can't miss" performance. The music, the story, the conflict of law and grace and other metaphysical questions--it's an epic show that I'll think about for weeks afterward.

May--We'll be leading our entourage (my parents, our daughters and daughter-in-law, and my nephew) on a 7-day Alaskan cruise round trip out of Seattle. Everyone has their passports, and seating assignments on our flight. When we get within 50-60 days or so from departure, we'll download the Oceans app and learn what "Medallion Class" cruising is all about. IWe've always gone to Alaska in September before. I think I'm most excited about seeing Glacier Bay in spring.

June--It'll be time to tune up the camper and head to northern Iowa for the DH's family reunion. We also hope to do more camping this summer, probably close to home, but maybe a bit farther afield.

September--The DH caught a terrible respiratory bug in 2019 and it hit just before Halloween. He's only now got a voice back. Because it didn't respond to antibiotics or antivirals, one of the many docs he saw for it suggested it might have been allergic at first, then an opportunistic secondary infection moved in. In case it was seasonal allergy related, we plan to get the heck out of Dodge this year. We're booked on a 19 day cruise out of LA to the Panama Canal and back! It'll be just the dose of sunshine we need before winter settles in.

Then on January 3, 2021, we ....

...to be continued!