Cabin upgrade

  Brisbane, Australia
Saturday, September 29, 2007

Three weeks time and we'll be on our way, actually we'll be in Rome. 

Another couple of thousand added to the holiday this week.  When we first looked at booking the cruise we looked at what a cabin with a balcony (HAL calls them verandah suites) would cost.  On our cruise on Infinity in 2004 we changed into a balcony cabin half way through.

The answer .... way too much!  Hardly a suite either.  It's pretty much the same as our Infinity cabin, maybe a little bit bigger and with a tiny bathtub.  Just a bit of HALness.  The funniest 'perk' is personalised stationery.  Why on earth would we be writing anything?  That's what a laptop is for.  Ha.

Anyway, I still wanted to have my own balcony so I contacted our agent - the fantastic Marsha Griffin at Cruise Value Center (free plug) - in the states last weekend and asked if we could be waitlisted.  Within 48hours we were offered the upgrade.  After negotiating another USD200 off the quoted cost we are now in a cat B verandah suite!  Bit of a change from our original EE guarantee and because of the dramatic raise of the Aussie dollar against the USD, the total cost for the trip is still within a few hundred dollars of our original calculations back in Feb. 

from the bottom to the top

Our roll call on Cruisecritic finally has a few more critters posting and we are being joined on a couple of the tours we've booked - Malta and Casablanca - by four fellow critters Karen and her sister Mary, and Hank and Suzanne.   
Work has been crapola for the last couple of weeks but there's now a lull before the next lot of testing can start, and we'll be outta here and in Europe by then.  The rest of the team will be putting in plenty of long hours to get everything finished by ....  well that hasn't been locked in yet.

We get our yellow fever shots this week.  Ouch.  Can't get into Brasil without them after visiting Dakar, and there would be problems getting back in to Oz as well.

Dakar - word of warning to any Aussies or Kiwis planning on visiting Senegal.  Getting a visa is a huge hassle.  Only way to do it is to send it to Senegal Embassy and the only one we could get responses from was London.  You can only pay cash for the visa so if you are going, get yourself some GBP, a fiver will do for a short visit, and then courier everything over to London.  Al's visa was 3pounds 15 pence.  Cost $80 for the courier!  The staff over there are really helpful.  Remember to send proof of your visit - just an itinerary from your TA is enough. 

cheers pete