The Final Countdown

With only 36 days to go, many hours of organising and planning have been consumed and the lists of tasks is finally getting much smaller. The laptop has arrived and has had it's hard disk drive (spinning) replaced with a solid state drive, everything's been booked and paid and some of the tickets have arrived. We've even completed a trial pack (and weigh-in) of our luggage.

Many of our friends have commented on our ability to effortlessly "recite" our itinerary - the result of going through the detail with a fine tooth comb so many times. Nevertheless, the names of some of the towns on our Turkey and India Tours are still a bit of a mystery to us.

Our blog has been receiving critical acclaim with may friends and colleagues giving us very positive and encouraging feedback. There have been a few more improvements since the last post including:

• flight path maps of every sector and region/continent
• a detailed calendar showing our comings and goings
• a Google calendar with map links to the places we're visiting
• contact details page that we'll update as we change mobile phone SIMs
• count down clocks that will update as we travel from one country/city to the next
• a World of Discovery page and
• TravelPod page with a detailed map of the route

Welcome back if you've visited our blog already. If you were a little surprised that our trip included a stay at the worlds most luxurious hotel, the Burj Al Arab in Dubai (particularly since we don't plan to stop anywhere in the Middle East), it was our little scam to grab your attention. The picture of this (apparently) amazing place is just a teaser to encourage the visitors to our blog site to check out some of the amazing places we will be staying.

One of the challenges that we decided to take on ourselves was to select and book the canal cruise in England. The more we looked the harder it got to decide. (click on the picture for a little movie)

Narrowboats - 'the fastest way to slow down'

Eventually we settled on a company based in Oxford called College Cruisers. The narrowboat we've selected to take to Banbury (hopefully) and back is called Trinity. She's a 50ft (15.1m) vessel with a semi traditional stern deck. There's a photo of her on the right of this page amongst the other cruise vessels.

Oxford Canal

Our very good friend Mandy has decided to join us in New York and Washington. This development has spurred us into action and we've come up with some maps full of pins for both these cities. There's no way we'll get close to visiting every place but we'll have fun trying!

Another major development is the recent launch of Avalon's brand new MS Panorama - our "Magnificent Europe" River Cruise Ship.

MS Panorama

Panorama will cruise along the Rhine, Main and Danube Rivers visiting Amsterdam, Cologne, Rhine Gorge, Rudesheim, Miltenberg, Wurzburg, Bamberg, Main Danube Canal, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Passau, Melk, Durnstein, Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest.

Discovering Europe in style

 Panorama is a double decker river cruiser that carries 166 guests. She has been described as Europe’s first “suite” ship, offering two entire decks of all-suite accommodation with wall-to-wall panoramic windows which open up to create an open air balcony.

MS Panorama Suite

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At the other end of the scale, our Caribbean Cruise is aboard Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas , the world's largest passenger ship. Allure carries around 6,000 passengers on 16 passenger decks, measures 360m in length and has a 91,000 tonne displacement. She's 50mm longer than her sister Oasis of the Seas.

Allure being welcomed to Fort Lauderdale (home port)

Allure is so big the ship is divided into seven distinctly designed neighbourhoods :-

• Vitality at Sea Spa and Fitness
• Pool and Sports Zone
• Entertainment Place
• Youth Zone
• Boardwalk
•  Central Park and
• AquaTheater

Allure and Oasis are so tall (72m above the waterline) they're equipped with telescoping funnels to help pass under some bridges. Sydney Harbour bridge has a clearance of only 49 metres and the Gateway Bridge in Brisbane has a clearance of 55 metres.

Royal Caribbean Allure of the Seas sails very carefully under Denmark's Storebaelt Bridge after leaving the Turku shipyard in Finland.

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That's all for now but before you leave,

Have you seen the previous page titled " Round the World Ticket " yet? 

(click on the link to take you there)

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