Packed and ready to go.

Hilary climbed into the attic today and brought down our "Cruise Suitcases", now why are these different from our "Airline Suitcases" you may ask? Apart from being very old, battered and with enough duct tape to make up a whole reel patching them, it is the fact that they are reasonably low profile and stack one inside the other. We used them on our Round the World and realised that we were one of the few cabins who could stick them under the bed after all the clothes were hung in the wardrobes. Not much of a big deal you may think, but believe me at the end of the cruise it is a huge advantage to have your suitcases in your cabin instead of having to wait on a crew member to bring them up from the hold before you can pack them. We go for speedy checkouts when we can!

I listened to Hilary talking to Samantha on Skype today and if I had wondered why she needed a bigger suitcase than me it was all summed up in the statement, "I never know what I may need so I just take everything...." And there was me wondering if I needed more than three shirts and two pairs of trousers. My biggest concern (other than fitting into my dinner suit, is how to get my video camera and netbook safely on-board But basically we are packed and ready to leave in just over 2 days time - can't wait for the limo to pick us up. With all the 'good' clothes packed we will just have to be scruffs for a little while.

These past two weeks have been busy with starting the build of the garden water feature so we are looking forward to some rest and relaxation, we just hope that the great weather we have had over the past two weeks will continue with us for the duration of the holiday. Our first port of call is Vigo in Spain (assuming we don't all die crossing the dreaded Bay of Biscay) and for that we will be relying on the guidance of the tour director as to which tour would suit us best. The practise on the last cruise was to hold a talk and slide show in the Theatre the day before the tour so we are expecting that to be the norm again this time, anyway we haven't booked for Vigo or Lisbon and so far have only committed ourselves to the Parthenon, Acropolis and Ephesus tours, the others we will decide on while cruising.

Don't expect a blog every day, that will be most unlikely but we will try and post something together with some pictures as often as we can. Last time we always blogged around 9.00pm after the evening show and consequently missed out on some of the later night, on deck, entertainment. This time we hope to be a bit more adventurous and take advantage of all the ship's facilities.

Keep watching!