Dec 23

One more milestone achieved!  Today Luggage Free picked up 4 big suitcases which will be shipped to our cabin.  Because we will be sailing on the entire 180 day cruise, Oceania is paying for the luggage to be shipped! 

 We will each have a rolling duffel bag and a backpack that we will be responsible for and those are mostly packed.  We need to get this cruise started so that we quit adding things to the duffel bags!  Notice I didn't say anything about removing things from the duffel....only adding!

Got our 2nd HepA vaccine while we were in NC this past week, had Christmas with our amazing family, said good-bye to our wonderful neighbors, and drove back to SFlorida.  We're ready to sail!!!

December 15, 2015:

I thought  I'd write a brief note about our itinerary and ship.  We are on the beautiful Insignia of Oceania cruise line, built in 1998 and refurbished in 2014.  She is about 590 feet in length, her beam is 83.5 feet and maximum draught is 19.5 feet.  She carries stabilizers and cruises at 18 knots.  Since she is a small ship she can go up rivers and into ports that the larger ships cannot.

(picture by Dave of Insignia in the Italian port of Civitavecchia)

There are 9 full decks and the 10 is a lovely place to get a 360 degree view of the world.  She can carry 684 people with an international staff of 400.  There are five restaurants: some elegant, some  casual, and no formal nights so I don't have to pack my tiara.

There is evening entertainment, a few bars and a casino,which won't get our $ since David the engineer knows the odds!  Room service is offered for all meals which we might take advantage of some evenings after returning from excursions tired and sunscreen grubby.

There is a coffee bar (Yay!) and afternoon tea, a library, pools, gym, spa, beauty shop, clinic with medical staff, and small walking track on the 10 deck with about 13 laps to a mile! 

We have a 200 sq. ft cabin with veranda  on the 7th deck right in the ship's middle to defeat mal de mer! Several people have remarked on being in 200 sq ft with their spouse for 6 months but we vow to remain married AND friends, and have I mentioned.... the pool, the library and the walking track?

   (picture by Cynthia at Portofino)

We head for the Epic Hotel in Miami on Jan 3 and will take the opportunity to walk around, catch the trolley, and ride the metromover since it has been years since we've seen the city of Miami.  The next morning staff takes us to the ship to start our great adventure--and to celebrate David's birthday!

For those asking about our itinerary, here it is!  It is too long to list, but you can keep track of us by clicking away.    We're not promising an entry every day, but we'll post often........cynthia

https://www.oceaniacruises.com/180-day-world-cruises/miami-to-miami-INS160104G/

Another hurdle passed on the road to Round The World:  CIBT returned our brand new 52 page passports with visas for China, India and Brazil.  Oceania also sent us forms for Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Australia that we need to fill out before we board.  And have lots of passport photos to go with them.  And once we get going, there are a bunch of other countries that we'll handle as we get to them.  Good thing we got the fat passports with lots of room for visas.

Thankfully, Oceania included the visa costs in the RTW package.

Staples just called.  They have finished printing the 500 page briefing book that Cynthia has researched over the last 6 months.  We will be prepared, at least as measured by the volume of paper that we take along.

We've also gotten our shots and prescriptions.  Yellow fever (only took 4 trips to the clinic to get the proper paperwork), Hepatitis A, Polio, Typhoid, Malaria and seasickness.

We've booked about 60 ship's excursions, along with 5 overnight trips away from the boat.  We'll get to schedule our specialty restaurant visits early in November.  By my count there are 76 sea days and 104 port days at 91 unique ports.  We've chosen ship's tours where we want the security, guarantee of getting back to the boat on time, and they are going where we want to go.  We have maps and walking tours for the ones we do on our own in an attempt to see everything we can.  Places like Hong Kong and Sydney we'll do entirely on our own, with the help of the local Hop On Hop Off tour bus.  We have bus schedules and routes.  We have ferry schedules.  We have 500 pages of notes.

We have T-Mobile phones that should work in about 2/3 of the places we visit.  Maps.me provides maps and routing without a data connection.  We have Magellan Triton handheld GPS units and have done maps for every port and excursion.  We have about 600 waypoints or points of interest added to GPS.  We've even marked MacDonald's in many ports (we'll say that's because Mac's usually has good WiFi, but after months of Insignia's food we may crave a Big Mac.)

Here's the map of our trip.  Oceania's Insignia is the vessel.  Departs Miami on Jan 4, 2016 and returns there on July 1.  Unfortunately we're traveling the wrong way around the globe, so we'll have 24 days of 23 hours, and one day added in crossing the Date Line.  I'd rather do it the other way, but then I'm not driving the boat.

Around the world cruise

More to come as the time nears.  Just redid the blog layout to make it more user-friendly.  I hope.