Cruise preparation update

Christmas shopping, wardrobe assembly, industrial size hand sanitizer, doctors appts, updated tax documents, auto bill payment, visas...all check. I'm feeling pretty good about the preparations. I've been picking up things I need as I come across them. There is a little pile growing in my closet.

To help prepare myself for the world cruise I've been doing research on the ports and the things I would like to see and do. This has lead me to set up some private tours.

In Easter Island I have arranged a cruise critic group to see the statues. In Sorrento I have a similar group set up to see Herculaneum. The Easter Island one is slow to respond and has asked for prepayment which may cause the preparations to fall apart.

I've found a nice tour in Lima that allows you to see wildlife and swim with sea lions. Also in Lima I am going to try and set up a tour to see some ruins and tour the city. We have a day and a half there so I should have time for all three.

I have a wonderful tour arranged for Mumbai to go with a private tour company for an Indian cooking class and then head out to Elephanta island to see the world heritage site caves. But as many of you who read this are aware, there has recently been some terrorist activity that may impact our stopping in that port. I sure hope not, as India is a highlight for me.

I have also spend some time trying to arrange a wonderful private tour in Bangkok. Some places just resonate with you. The sights in Bangkok sure resonated with me. Mysteriously the tour guide I was working with encouraged me to pick something that stayed around the ship. So I abandoned the plans and booked a ship tour. It turns out that I hadn't been paying enough attention to world events and Bangkok was having major unrest. I sure hope we keep this port. But for now I'm on the ship's tour and will see a subset of what I hoped to see.

A main thrust of my research has been trying to set up an overland Egyptian tour. I really want to do this overland. The agenda for the Princess overland spends alot of time transferring between sights. I had hoped to stay around Luxor and Cairo and more fully explore what those areas have to offer. And I found some great highly recommended tour companies with prices half that offered by Princess. But so far I have not found a group to go. Maybe someone will show up on our roll call with the same ambition to see Egypt and it will all work out in the end.

I reread through the World Cruise brochure last night when I couldn't sleep. Wow, I can still hardly believe I have the opportunity to do this. What an adventure!