Cruise Map

Here is a URL to a nice map for the first part of the cruise.

http://tahitianprincess2009worldcruisemap.blogspot.com/

This shows the first 90% of our trip. We go on from London to Lenongrad and then back to Stockholm...an extra 10 days "extention" added onto the back end of the route shown on the map. I'm not sure where to get the full map, but this one show most of the trip.

More Cabin Photos

These picture in order are:

1) Front door viewed from living area. Guest bath is to the left of the door.

2) Jacuzzi in bath as seen from bedroom.

3) Personal balcony. (The person is Ken, not me.)

4) Living room through curtain to left from bedroom.

5) Bed

Our Cabin

We already have some photos of our cabin. This is possible because one of my fraternity brothers and his wife (Ken and Jennie) were in the exact same cabin on the same ship for a different cruise earlier this year.

This is a nice cabin. For those of you who have not been on a cruise before, this is far from typical. Normally the rooms are cramped. But, given that we are going to be here 119 days, we ofted for the bigger space.

Photos are:

1) Bed and window.

2) Bed and balcony door.

3) Sofa area in living room.

4) View from living room to bedroom.

5) Dining table, living room, and balcony.

Dave

Dave

Shore Excursions

Everyone who has taken a cruise knows about shore excursions. The ship pulls into a port, you get off the ship and either go off on your own to do something, or you take an organized tour while the ship is in port. You return to the ship later, and it leaves that port.

There is an added dimension to the shore excursions on our cruise. Because of the length of the cruise, and because you get to so many distant locations, it is often attractive to book a tour that leaves the ship from one port, fly somewhere else, stay in a hotel for one night or more, visit something in that location, catch another flight later to a different port, and rejoin the ship.

This introduces some interesting possibilities. On the one hand you think, "I already paid for room and board and transportation for the ship, so why do I want to pay for additional room, board and transportation and not use those days on the ship?" (The cruise line does not refund anything because you are skipping lodging and meals for those days away from the ship.) But, of course, one needs to think instead that you've got to take advantage of all the places that are going to be so much easier to reach that if you tried to do so as a separate trip from the US. But some of these excursions can cost as much on their own as many of the vacations one takes as a stand-alone trip.

Kathleen has probably spent 20-30 hours so far booking trips for us. She has 28 or so excursions bookings already. Some of the more interesting ones are:

-Galapogos Island: This involved a choice. You can go to Machu Picchu during the Equador-to-Peru period, or you can go to Galapogos. You cannot do both. We had originally signed up for Machu Picchu, but have since discovered we can do that some time in the future as an 8-day stand-alone trip out of Miami and pay less than the 3-day tour was from the ship. So we are picking to do Galapogos during the cruise.

-Great Wall and Beijing: We leave the ship in Shanghi, fly to Beijing, spend 4 days and 3 nights seeing the Forbidden City, Tienamen Square, the Great Wall and others. Fly to Hong Kong to rejoin the ship.

-AnkorWat: Leave the ship in Saigon. Fly to AnkorWat, Camboia for 3 days, 2 nights. Fly to Phnom Penh to rejoin the ship at the closest port.

-Taj Mahal: A flight out and back from one port in a single, long day.

-Normandy: The 119-day cruise is really a 109-day tour and a 10-day tour spliced together. Most people will embark or disembark in Dover (the port nearest to London) on "day 108" from our itinerary. The "day 107" port is near Paris for the first cruise piece, as is "day 109" for the second cruise piece. We are leaving the ship on day 107, thus missing all the confusion on the ship for the passenger exchange in Dover, and taking two long days to get a WWII tour of Normandy. We rejoin the ship when in comes back two days later.

Dave

Pirates

Our son, Scott, felt that our itinerary (posted earlier below) was incomplete...that it should have also listed for day 86 "pirate battle." Well he is right that on that day we sail through the Gulf of Aden, between Somalia and Yemen, where pirates have been active. There is a German world cruise underway now that just this past Wednesday had all of the passengers unload on one side of this stretch of sea and fly to the other so they would be off the ship for this section due to pirates. Reference:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081209/ap_on_bi_ge/piracy

A neighbor women from German who lived 5 or so doors away from us is on this ship. She said the logistics were quite impressive to move all these people, especially since some of them were with walkers or wheel chairs. (Not sure how we feel about that demographic insight.)

So, this problem may be gone by the time we get there, or not. We also will be interested in the situation in Mumbai (Bombay, India).

Let the adventures begin!

Dave

Our Itinerary

Day ........Date ...........Port
1 ..........1/14/09 ..........Florida USA
3 ..........1/16/09 ..........Grand Cayman
5 ..........1/18/09 ..........Panama Canal Panama
7 ...........1/20/09 ..........Quito (Manta) Ecuador
10 .........1/23/09 ..........Lima Peru
16 .........1/29/09 ...........Easter Island Chile
19 .........2/1/09 .............Pitcairn Island
22 .........2/4/09 ............Papeete Tahiti
24 .........2/6/09 ............Rarotonga Cook Islands
............2/9/09 ..............CROSS INT DATE LINE
29 .........2/12/09 ..........Auckland New Zealand
34 .........2/17/09 ...........Tasmania (Burnie) Australia
36 ..........2/19/09 ...........Sydney Australia
38 ..........2/21/09 ...........Brisbane Australia
41 ..........2/24/09 ...........Cairns (Yorkeys) Australia
44 ..........2/27/09 ...........Rabaul Papua/New Guinea
47 ...........3/2/09 ............Guam Mariana Islands
51 ...........3/6/09 .............Osaka Japan
52 ...........3/7/09 .............Hiroshima Japan
54 ...........3/9/09 .............Inchon Korea
56 ...........3/11/09 ............Shanghai China
59 ...........3/14/09 ............Hong Kong China
62 ...........3/17/09 ............Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Vietnam
64 ...........3/19/09 ............Sihanoukville (Angkor Wat) Cambodia
66 ...........3/21/09 ............Bangkok (Unithai) Thailand
69 ...........3/24/09 ............Singapore
70 ...........3/25/09 ............Kuala Lumpur (Port Kelang) Malaysia
72 ...........3/27/09 ............Andaman Island Indonesia
77 ...........4/1/09 .............Mumbai (Bombay) India
81 ..........4/5/09 ............Dubai United Arab Emirates
84 ..........4/8/09 ............Salalah Oman
89 ..........4/13/09 ..........Luxor/Karnak (Safaga) Egypt
91 ..........4/15/09 ...........Suez Canal Egypt
92 ..........4/16/09 ...........Port Said (Cairo/Giza) Egypt
94 ..........4/18/09 ...........Athens (Piraeus) Greece
96 ..........4/20/09 ...........Sorrenbto/Capri Italy
97 ..........4/21/09 ............Rome Italy
98 ..........4/22/09 ...........Cannes France
99 ..........4/23/09 ...........Barcelona Spain
101 .........4/25/09 ..........Gibraltar
102 .........4/26/09 ..........Lisbon Portugal
105 .........4/29/09 ..........Cork (Cobh)
107 ..........5/1/09 ...........Paris France
108 ..........5/2/09 ...........London England
109 ..........5/3/09 ...........Paris France
110 ..........5/4/09 ...........Brussels Belgium
111 ..........5/5/09 ...........Amsterdam Holland
113 ..........5/7/09 ...........Copenhagen Denmark
115 ..........5/9/09 ...........Helsinki Findland
116 ..........5/10/09 ..........St. Petersbug Russia
117 ..........5/11/09 ...........Talinn Estonia
118 ..........5/12/09 ..........Stockholm Sweden

[Question: "So why is this called a 119-day cruise, but you get off the ship on day 118?" Answer: Time zones. We lose a day when we cross the international date line...and 18 of the cruise days will be 25-hours long. It will be the 119th day from you perspective if you remain in one time zone, but only the 118th day for us!]

Test of Photo Posting

This is a test photo...just to see if I can upload photos to the blog. This is the first cruise Kathleen and I took together. It was my present to her about 35 years ago when she graduated from Miami University. Given that this picture accurately records how we look now, we'll use this as the official "before" photo to see how well we stand up to 119 days through the buffet line.

Dave

Blog Setup

Our world cruise starts 1/14/09 and runs through 5/12/09. That's 119 days and 51 ports!

We are setting up this blog site so that we can post comments and photos as we go. We'll give the blog address out to people who may or may not be interested and they can visit as the cruise progresses.

So at this point we won't have very frequent postings. We are just trying to get the setup right prior to leaving on 1/14.

Dave
12/2