Dan and Sue's World Cruise

Friday, December 13, 2024 There are lots of things to do in preparation for the cruise. What and how much to take; International phone use, worldwide internet access; shore excursion reservations; April 15th taxes, required visas; medications, etc. First, figuring out how to pay for it! The total amount is due now! I had to transfer money from my investment accounts into to my local checking account. This is normally not a problem but, since I had recently made some deposits in the areas I wanted to draw from, I had to wait for some transfer paperwork to take place. This resulted in a couple extensions to my invoice with Cunard. They accommodated and we are locked in. Since we are committing late to this cruise, we are in the minority of the nearly 3,000 passengers who have already booked and reserved cabins and shore excursions. So, Sue and I started booking available shore excursions online. We spent three days going over available excursions and paying for them online. Surpri...

  Tuesday, December 10, 2024 One of my Bucket List items was to visit Australia. This dates back to my Navy days in the late 60s. My ship, the USS Chicago CG-11, did two tours to Viet Nam. Our job was to patrol the waters off North Viet Nam to monitor communist aircraft taking off from bases in Hanoi. On our return home, many ships had the opportunity to visit Australia on the way back to our home port in San Diego. Twice we were scheduled to stop there for some R&R (Rest & Relaxation). But, in both cases, our visit was cancelled and the scuttlebutt, (Navy jargon for unreliable information) was that the Navy Wives Club were instrumental in the getting those port calls cancelled. So, Sue and I started looking at RV caravans tours of Australia and New Zealand offered by Fantasy Tours. This is a company that organizes RV tours like we took part in a couple years ago when we toured the Maritime Provinces of Canada. We didn't care for the long air flights and cost. So, ...