Written Tuesday, August 6, 2019
What follows is a travel log of sorts which will document the back-to-back cruises Mary and I will complete (as this point). The intent of the document is to cover some of the history, preparation, travel, the on-ship happenings, the cities we visit, and whatever else I want to throw in.
We are scheduled to fly from Tampa to London (Gatwick) next Friday night, August 16th. We will then sail from Southampton to the western Mediterranean and then back to London. We stay on the same ship then travel the Baltic to St. Petersburgh and back to London. From there we fly to JFK, switch planes and fly to Orlando. Counting flying days, it is a thirty-day vacation. It is our longest trip we have done since our Ireland trip in 2008. That trip was 21 days. I’m not a great traveler. In most cases, if not all, I hate the act of traveling. When we are on the ship in Southampton, our bags have arrived, and I have had my first beer, I will be happy. I feel better about this trip probably because I was very close to the details.
Before we leave I want to jot down some of the things that need to be done in preparation for this adventure. In the past, Mary did the planning and set up of the trips. This trip was setup almost exclusively by me. I’m in between gigs so I took it upon myself to manage this trip.
We sailed around the bottom of South America (Santiago, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina) in March of 2018. When we were approaching the start of that trip Princess Cruises called and said they would give us two free cruises (cruise fare only) if we gave up our vacation. After a lot of thought, we said no. They came back and said if we moved to an interior cabin, the South America cruise would be free (they would convert our cruise fare to onboard credit) and we would get a free 14-day cruise. After much thought, we agreed to this arrangement. I have a similar document that details South America trip, if interested. I mention this because the one of these two cruises is the ‘free’ cruise. When on the ship going around South America we visited the Future Cruises office. Mary found these back-to-back cruises so we decided to put a down payment on them. These two cruises will cover a lot of Europe and, as I recently discovered, we set foot on Africa. When we do this we can say we have been on four of seven continents. Mary has a goal of hitting all seven in her life. Technically, this will leave Antarctica, Australia and Asia. That day, sitting in the Future Cruises office, we made plans for our next adventure – 17 months in advance.
Not much happened – related to this trip – until about April of this year. Mary said, more than once, I should look at the excursions available in the various ports. There is only port (Sardinia) that the ship does not dock – it uses tenders to ferry people to shore. When tendering is done, I’m not allowed off the ship due to safety concerns. This meant I should try to find excursions everywhere else. Mary and I have been cruising for almost thirty years (we have 70+ days on ships and this trip will put us over 100 days). There are more excursions that accommodate wheelchairs today than thirty years ago, but they are still limited in my opinion. I will not go into details here, but I found a handful of excursions sponsored by Princess – Barcelona, Florence, Rome, Brussels, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Tallin (Estonia), and Helsinki. They are all bus tour trips. I paid for these so they were set. For ports that Princess did not have excursions, I searched the internet for options. I found third-party tour companies that offered tours in various ports. I exchanged emails, made accommodations and paid for them – Seville (Spain), Marseille, and St. Petersburg. They required passport numbers. Our passports expired in February or somewhere near there so we had to go through the renewal process which took about two months. I did not get the updated numbers until we moved to Florida in May because I sent the new passports to Florida. With the new passports in hand I was able to complete the process and pay for these excursions. As mentioned, I can’t get off on Sardinia. We don’t have anything scheduled for Ceuta (Spanish Morocco) or Gdansk (Poland). We will likely get off the ship and try to find a tour or walk around the town or whatever is near the port. We are scheduled to do more excursions than any previous trips. We have eleven at sea days so we will have several ‘down’ days along the way. It took from start to finish about three months to finalize the excursions but they are now set.
While working to finalize excursions, I worked on the flights. Being in Florida is a bit different than Chicago. Going in/out of O’Hare would probably be easy. I was hoping there would be direct flights from Orlando from/to London, but I struck out in both directions. I found Tampa to London (Gatwick) nonstop (British Airways) and selected that. Mary knows a guy who will drive us to Tampa with our van. On the way back, we go from Heathrow to JFK (Virgin Atlantic) to Orlando (Delta). That will be a long day. We will have to figure out how to get home at 11:00 at night from Orlando. We will figure that out later. I had flights nailed down. The next question is what class should we fly. To and from South America we flew business class. It was crazy expensive. I knew we did not want to pay that for these flights. At the other end, we knew we did not want to fly coach or economy. The flight from Tampa to London is about nine hours, not counting boarding, tarmac, landing, deplaning. In reality it could be ten-plus hours on the plane. We agreed to fly the class between business and coach. It is still expensive, but not-out-of-this-world expensive. I think I had the flights nailed in June. Recently, Mary asked “did you pick seats”? That became my next hurdle. I completed this, as much as possible, today. British Airways ‘holds’ some number of Premium Plus seats for nursing mothers. I have two seats booked, but they’re not together right now. The plan is to correct this at the airport. The other seats are set.
Getting from the airport to ship and vice versa is handled by Princess, but they need to know I’m in a chair and I require special travel accommodations – usually a lift-enabled van or bus. One day I called Princess to find out what is needed to ensure the travel from airport to ship was disabled ready. They forwarded a form asking about chair weight, size, etc. I filled it out and sent it back. Then it went into a blackhole for a month or more. I called twice to follow up on it and the response received was it is in process. Just last week, I finally received confirmation that the right transportation was in place. I know to do these things based on previous experience. I often wonder how new travelers know.
When traveling, Mary gives me a sponge bath. I go without a true shower for the duration of the trip. I was facing a month without a true shower. This is not a good idea. Based on a tip from a friend, I researched portable shower chairs. I found one that could be taken apart and stored in one rolling case. It wasn’t cheap, but I’ll use it for this and all future trips. In my mind it will never pay for itself, but if I use it 100 or more times it starts to make sense. I ordered it and it came a few weeks later. Mary put it together and we did two test showers with it. It is not as nice as my day-to-day shower chair, but it will do when traveling.
One day when wandering around the Princess.com website I saw a link for LuggageForward, a service that ships your luggage from the home to the ship. Knowing we were going for 28 days I knew we would have bags – likely several. I liked the idea of not having to lug several bags from home, to the airport, through customs, to the ship and back again. Of course, everything comes at a price. Mary and I talked this through. We landed on one big bag and the portable shower chair. It was a cost versus convenience decision. We would have paid something to the airlines for the extra bags. As I mentioned, the lugging is unfun (for Mary). We will still take two smaller bags – check one of them, carry on the other. We will load up our backpacks too. We do not travel light – mostly because of my needs – medical supplies, shower chair, etc.
Somewhere in our travels, we started renting a tuxedo for me. They bring it to the ship and pick it up from there. I don’t really have any formal clothes so this makes sense. Plus, it is less we need to carry. Like, LuggageForward, Princess as a weblink to the tux rental company. This was a quick purchase – go to the site, pick out tux style and sizes, provide credit card and done. One more to-do off the list. There isn’t an option like this for Mary. One recent Saturday, we went to Dillards in Ocala. Mary found three dresses and a jacket. Last night, she was trying on new shoes. Her formal dress is complete too.
Over the last month or so, there have been various reasons to call Princess. On one of those calls the agent asked if I selected any extras. I knew what she meant. They have packages like all the soda you can drink for $X or all the alcohol for $X. The packages are cheaper than buying one-by-one on the ship. I reviewed the options. Mary drinks tea so we got her the coffee/tea package for both cruises. I got six bottles of beer for the cabin. I gave serious thought to getting the alcohol package, but it expensive. I drink, but not enough to justify the cost. Most importantly – to Mary – is the Photos package. For a set price, you get all of the pictures the cruise staff takes of us. If I remember correctly, we have 150 or more pictures of us from the South America trip. We get two-five-ten pictures taken a night. I can just see it now – 28 days times ten pictures a day equals a lot of damn pictures. I’m not always happy doing it, but it is important to Mary so I smile pretty.
It seems there is always one more thing. I got my hair cut. Mary got hers done recently too. I updated the credit card companies that we might use the cards in any of eleven countries. It is more a precaution. They are ready if needed. We both need to load up on media. I added music to Mary’s laptop. I updated my music library too. (Listening to Pink Floyd’s Animals album right now.) I found and downloaded three Audible books – two history and one novel. I will set up email addresses on all devices. We get 250 minutes of internet time per cruise on each cruise. That’s about 25 minutes a day. We fire up, connect, download unread email, send new email, and disconnect. Even then we might need more time. The plane seats are equipped with individual screens that will have TV shows, movies and games. Despite this, I will add a few movies or shows from Netflix or Amazon Prime. I will likely watch or listen to 10% of what I will have available, but I like to have options.
This past weekend, my chair back became loose. Mary was able to replace a missing screw, but we wanted the whole chair checked out to double check. I found a local wheelchair/scooter place – Mobility Monkey. I called Saturday. Monday, when I got my hair cut, the barber and wheelchair place are up the street from each other. We stopped at the wheelchair place. Initially, the lady suggested making an appointment, but she changed gears and said she would have some one look at it immediately. Mary transferred me to a folding chair. I hung on for dear life for about twenty minutes while the chair was worked on. Mary put me back just as I was getting really uncomfortable. The work man told us what he did – which wasn’t much because the chair is pretty solid yet. They charged us $25 ad we were out of there. Mary and I both feel better that is off the list.
There are several little things that need to be finalized in regards to the house. Our friend Tom found a garage where we can park Mary’s car while we are gone. Our new friend Elizabeth will handle mail and packages. I will prepay the bills that I can before we go. It just makes it easier.
I’m sure there are other things we have done in
preparation, but they don’t come to mind. (Just remembered, we verified our
phones have international coverage.) All of the various workstreams discussed
above were done in parallel. I didn’t complete A before starting B. I had all
the balls in the air at once. We are now eight days from leaving. All the
‘preparation’ tasks are marked complete. As I mention above, I have a new
appreciation for what is involved because I was the one doing it. I will update
this document as with progress.
Itinerary
| Date | Port | Duration |
| 17-Aug-19 | London (Southampton), England | Depart 4:00pm |
| 18-Aug-19 | AT SEA | |
| 19-Aug-19 | AT SEA | |
| 20-Aug-19 | Seville (Cadiz), Spain | Arrive 7:00am Depart 6:00pm |
| 21-Aug-19 | AT SEA | |
| 22-Aug-19 | Barcelona, Spain | Arrive 8:00am Depart 6:00pm |
| 23-Aug-19 | Marseille (Provence), France | Arrive 7:00am Depart 5:00pm |
| 24-Aug-19 | Florence/Pisa (Livorno), Italy | Arrive 7:00am Depart 7:00pm |
| 25-Aug-19 | Rome (Civitavecchia), Italy | Arrive 7:00am Depart 7:00pm |
| 26-Aug-19 | Sardinia (Alghero), Italy | Arrive 8:00am Depart 5:00pm |
| 27-Aug-19 | AT SEA | |
| 28-Aug-19 | Ceuta, Spanish Morocco, Spain | Arrive 7:00am Depart 4:00pm |
| 29-Aug-19 | AT SEA | |
| 30-Aug-19 | AT SEA | |
| 31-Aug-19 | London (Southampton), England | Arrive 7:00am / Depart 4pm |
| 1-Sep-19 | Brussels/Bruges (Zeebrugge), Belgium | Arrive 7:00am Depart 6:00pm |
| 2-Sep-19 | AT SEA | |
| 3-Sep-19 | Copenhagen, Denmark | Arrive 8:00am Depart 5:00pm |
| 4-Sep-19 | AT SEA | |
| 5-Sep-19 | Stockholm, Sweden | Arrive 9:00am Depart 5:00pm |
| 6-Sep-19 | Tallinn, Estonia | Arrive 10:00am Depart 5:00pm |
| 7-Sep-19 | St. Petersburg, Russia | Arrive 6:30am |
| 8-Sep-19 | St. Petersburg, Russia | Depart 6:00pm |
| 9-Sep-19 | Helsinki, Finland | Arrive 8:00am Depart 5:00pm |
| 10-Sep-19 | AT SEA | |
| 11-Sep-19 | Gdansk (Gdynia), Poland | Arrive 7:00am Depart 4:00pm |
| 12-Sep-19 | AT SEA | |
| 13-Sep-19 | AT SEA | |
| 14-Sep-19 | London (Southampton), England | Arrive 7:00am |