FourchonRoad

Posted blog for Mystery Island Vanuatu plus others since my last notice in the travel section of TD..........thanks if you are following

Mystery Island Vanuatu

quote:

---

Reminds me of a fake newspaper National Lampoon put out 50 years ago. One headline said, “Japan completely destroyed by earthquake”. Underneath it said, “Vacation plans of Iowa couple ruined”.

Enjoy your cruise. That sounds great.

---

Too funny, but true :lol:

When I have driven around Europe on vacation, I have always used Hertz or National.

The biggest suggestion I can offer you is not to get the large vehicle like we would do in the states for a couple of reasons:

1. Parking is hard to come by and a smaller car is easier to park

2. You might visit some locations which are not made for a larger vehicle, like trying to get inside castle walls

I have found driving in Europe to be very easy. Just relax and enjoy

Just finished one day in Honolulu on a World Cruise. Our next port in Kona was cancelled and probably Honolulu should have been skipped also. Throughout the islands there is flooding and road closures. It was a miserable day trying to do anything in tropical force winds and rain.

quote:

---

Great job so far with blog. Love your posts and pics! Oceania looks fantastic.

---

Thank you.....I appreciate it. If you have suggestions or ideas, let me know and I will try to figure out how to post about it or get you information you would want to know.

quote:

---

that is awesome you clearly know what you are doing. Thank you for sharing it will be fun to follow along

---

Thank you for following the blog. First one I have done and really unsure still what I am doing. The biggest issue is the poor Wi-Fi connection speed on the ship. It is taking me 3-4 hours for each day because of the slowness in uploading photos. Like a passenger said for the prices we paid for this World Cruise you would think they would provide us with good internet service.

Will be in Sydney April 9th for one day and then April 14-17th for three days. On the 9th we have book a full day private tour with Your Sydney Guide. When we fly back, we plan on doing the Sydney on our own.

Staying at Sydney Harbour Marriott @ Circular Quay. Thus far we have bought tickets to the Sydney Opera House performance Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony on April 15th and Journey Beyond Sydney Harbour Dinner Cruise on April 16th. I have never attended a symphony but could not pass up the chance to attend a performance inside the opera house.

quote:

---

When a colleague retired, he went on a 5-month ATW cruise on Seabourn in 2023. Miami to Barcelona. He said he could’ve done without the Western Africa segment (after being on the eastern side). Overall he liked it enough to book another one for 2027. Runs about $100,000/person and he spent close to another $100,000 on excursions including a 3-day safari in Africa

---

Seabourn is top notch as a cruiseline. Our cruise was about $80,000 a person as we added a couple of ship excursions that included over night off the ship. The remainder of our excursions added about $12,000 a person. While on the ship I will sit down and figure out the total cost.

I've noodled on a post-retirement ATW cruise and have some questions if you have time to respond:

1. Any logistical tips for arrangements back home for your house, mail, yard, etc. to be taken care of?

Hired lawn care to cut grass and spray weed killed every two weeks for four months. We hired a lady to house sit and also dog sit. She has done this for us in the past. She will handle our mail and all our bills are submitted electronically. We receive daily email from USPS so if we an envelope that we need opening, we will text her and ask her to let us know what is inside the envelope in case it is a bill we need to pay.

2. If you take any prescription medications, how does that work? I can only get a 30 or 90 day supply in advance. Do insurers make exceptions for travel plans like this or do you need to fill out-of-pocket?

We get prescription meds filled every 90 days. Then, we use a mom and pop place and he sold us additional month for cash. It was not bad as he charged his purchase price + 20%. We could have requested a vacation waiver to have the insurance provide us with one additional month above the 90 days but we didn't want to deal with it as the local pharmacy made it easy with the cash price.

3. Did you plan all of your excursions in advance? Are you doing cruise line excursions to simplify things, or did you research private excursions for all of these ports?

We received a $6800 on board credit from the cruiseline so we used that money to book cruise ship excursions. We normally stay away from cruise ship excursions but we decided to burn the OBC. We researched pretty extensively each port by viewing YouTube videos. We would write down the sites we found interesting and then narrowed down to 4-5 things in each port we wanted to see and placed these on 4x6 card to bring with us on the cruise.

Hope this answers your questions. Feel free to send others.

quote:

---

This is so wild. Just casually dropping you’ve been on 78 cruises, and are about to spend 120 days on one.

Do you pick up and drop off passengers throughout the voyage? Or are you with the same people the whole 120 days? I suppose if it’s all the same people, it probably averages $60-100k per person? Probably keep the riff raff to a minimum.

What’s the food like on these things? I’ve never been on a cruise where I thought the food was particularly good.

---

I don't hunt or fish. Got down to a -8 handicap in golf but have not played in 20-25 years. so, I cruised and cut grass as hobbies. Retired in November so decided why not a world cruise?

The cruise started in Los Angeles and was 197 days (100 passengers). I think there are 400 passengers who are doing 180 days and got on in Miami. Believe (round numbers) there are 300 of us joining in San Diego.
There are passengers doing different segments but total the ship holds 1200 passengers and is sold out. I am sure numbers will drop once the announcement of a itinerary change.

Oceania says it has the finest cuisine at sea and having sailed with them before a number of times, it is really good food. One problem for me is I have dropped 70 pounds over the past year, so I will try to minimize my food intake.

The cruise fare started at around $55k for the segment (180 days) that we are sailing. Our fare is north of that figure because of the cabin we selected.

quote:

---

what’s the route?
will be a trip of a lifetime for sure

---

Apologize for the poor copy and paste format. Now you see my challenge of trying to place in a travel blog or YouTube videos ..... laughing

Itinerary = Anchor Port
Day Port Arrive Depart
Mar 7 Sat San Diego, California, United States Embark 1 PM 6 PM
Mar 8 Sun At Sea
Mar 9 Mon At Sea
Mar 10 Tue At Sea
Mar 11 Wed At Sea
Mar 12 Thu At Sea
Mar 13 Fri Honolulu, Oahu, United States 7 AM 8 PM
Mar 14 Sat Kailua-Kona, United States 7 AM 6 PM
Mar 15 Sun At Sea
Mar 16 Mon At Sea
Mar 17 Tue At Sea
Mar 18 Wed At Sea
Mar 19 Thu Nuku Hiva, French Polynesia 7 AM 6 PM
Mar 20 Fri At Sea
Mar 21 Sat Rangiroa, French Polynesia 7 AM 5 PM
Mar 22 Sun Moorea, French Polynesia 8 AM 4 PM
Mar 22 Sun Papeete (Tahiti), French Polynesia 7 PM
Mar 23 Mon Papeete (Tahiti), French Polynesia 8 PM
Mar 24 Tue Raiatea, French Polynesia 7 AM 7 PM
Mar 25 Wed At Sea
Mar 26 Thu Rarotonga, Cook Islands 7 AM 4 PM
Mar 27 Fri At Sea
Mar 28 Sat Pago Pago, American Samoa 10 AM 6 PM
Mar 29 Sun Int'l Date Line West
Mar 29 Sun Int'l Date Line West
Mar 30 Mon Apia, Samoa 7 AM 6 PM
Mar 31 Tue At Sea
Apr 1 Wed Nuku'alofa, Tonga 8 AM 6 PM
Apr 2 Thu At Sea
Apr 3 Fri Suva, Fiji 7 AM 6 PM
Apr 4 Sat At Sea
Apr 5 Sun Mystery Island, Vanuatu 7 AM 4 PM
Apr 6 Mon Noumea, New Caledonia 8 AM 6 PM
Apr 7 Tue At Sea
Apr 8 Wed At Sea
Apr 9 Thu Sydney, Australia 7 AM 8 PM
Apr 10 Fri At Sea
Apr 11 Sat Mooloolaba, Australia 7 AM 5 PM
Apr 12 Sun At Sea
Apr 13 Mon Whitsunday Island (Airlie Beach), Australia 8 AM 7 PM
Apr 14 Tue Townsville, Australia 7 AM 6 PM
Apr 15 Wed Cairns, Australia 7 AM 3 PM
Apr 16 Thu At Sea
Apr 17 Fri At Sea
Apr 18 Sat Darwin, Australia 12 PM 11 PM
Apr 19 Sun At Sea
Apr 20 Mon Kupang West Timor, Indonesia 8 AM 4 PM
Apr 21 Tue Komodo, Indonesia 10 AM 6 PM
Apr 22 Wed Bali (Benoa), Indonesia 12 PM
Apr 23 Thu Bali (Benoa), Indonesia 4 PM
Apr 24 Fri Surabaya, Indonesia 10 AM 6 PM
Apr 25 Sat At Sea
Apr 26 Sun Singapore, Singapore 3 PM
Apr 27 Mon Singapore, Singapore 5 PM
Apr 28 Tue Kuala Lumpur (Port Klang), Malaysia 8 AM 5 PM
Apr 29 Wed Phuket, Thailand 1 PM
Apr 30 Thu Phuket, Thailand 4 PM
May 1 Fri At Sea
May 2 Sat At Sea
May 3 Sun Colombo, Sri Lanka 9 AM 10 PM
May 4 Mon At Sea
May 5 Tue Cochin (Kochi), India 7 AM 5 PM
May 6 Wed At Sea
May 7 Thu Mumbai, India 7 AM
May 8 Fri Mumbai, India 2 PM
May 9 Sat At Sea
May 10 Sun Muscat, Oman 12 PM 7 PM
May 11 Mon Khasab, Oman 10 AM 7 PM
May 12 Tue Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 7 AM 11 PM
May 13 Wed Dubai, United Arab Emirates 7 AM
May 14 Thu Dubai, United Arab Emirates 1 PM
May 15 Fri Muscat, Oman 9 AM 4 PM
May 16 Sat At Sea
May 17 Sun At Sea
May 18 Mon At Sea
May 19 Tue At Sea
May 20 Wed Jeddah, SAUDI ARABIA 10 AM 8 PM
May 21 Thu At Sea
May 22 Fri Luxor (Safaga), Egypt 6 AM
May 23 Sat Luxor (Safaga), Egypt 9 PM
May 24 Sun Suez Canal Transit
May 25 Mon Suez Canal Transit
May 26 Tue At Sea
May 27 Wed Santorini, Greece 7 AM 7 PM
May 28 Thu At Sea
May 29 Fri Messina (Sicily), Italy 7 AM 6 PM
May 30 Sat Sorrento/Capri, Italy 7 AM 5 PM
May 31 Sun Olbia/Porto Cervo (Sardinia), Italy 8 AM 4 PM
Jun 1 Mon Mahón (Menorca), Spain 10 AM 7 PM
Jun 2 Tue Barcelona, Spain 7 AM 5 PM
Jun 3 Wed Alicante, Spain 8 AM 4 PM
Jun 4 Thu Granada (Motril), Spain 8 AM 6 PM
Jun 5 Fri Tangier, Morocco 6 AM 2 PM
Jun 6 Sat Lisbon, Portugal 9 AM 7 PM
Jun 7 Sun Santiago de Compostela (Vigo), Spain 11 AM 7 PM
Jun 8 Mon At Sea
Jun 9 Tue Bordeaux, France 2 AM
Jun 10 Wed Bordeaux, France 3 PM
Jun 11 Thu Brest, France 11 AM 7 PM
Jun 12 Fri Saint-Malo, France 8 AM 5 PM
Jun 13 Sat Paris (Honfleur), France 7 AM 8 PM
Jun 14 Sun London (Southampton), United Kingdom 7 AM 6 PM
Jun 15 Mon Falmouth (Cornwall), United Kingdom 7 AM 4 PM
Jun 16 Tue Dublin (Dún Laoghaire), Ireland 8 AM 7 PM
Jun 17 Wed Cork (Cobh), Ireland 8 AM 4 PM
Jun 18 Thu Belfast, Ireland 10 AM 8 PM
Jun 19 Fri Glasgow (Greenock), United Kingdom 7 AM 7 PM
Jun 20 Sat At Sea
Jun 21 Sun Tórshavn (Faroe Islands), Denmark 7 AM 7 PM
Jun 22 Mon At Sea
Jun 23 Tue Akureyri, Iceland 7 AM 6 PM
Jun 24 Wed Isafjordur, Iceland 7 AM 5 PM
Jun 25 Thu Reykjavik, Iceland 7 AM 8 PM
Jun 26 Fri At Sea
Jun 27 Sat At Sea
Jun 28 Sun At Sea
Jun 29 Mon At Sea
Jun 30 Tue Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada 9 AM 6 PM
Jul 1 Wed At Sea
Jul 2 Thu New York, New York, United States 6 AM 6 PM
Jul 3 Fri At Sea
Jul 4 Sat Charleston, South Carolina, United States 9 AM 7 PM
Jul 5 Sun At Sea
Jul 6 Mon Miami, Florida, United States Disembark 8 AM