We have embarked Insignia … the home away from home that we will be sharing with some 600+ other passengers for the next 180 days.
I am taking advantage of the time before our bags are delivered to get a quickie post up … might as well use our Verizon data package while I still can ;-)
No need for many words … Insignia is here. We’ll be walking over to the waterfront in a few minutes to see the ship for ourselves … just waiting for the fog to lift.
Ready to get the show on the road!
© 2015-2017 — All rights reserved by Erin Erkun.
Today, we switched over to Oceania.
What I mean by that is that we did a virtual check out from our room, and checked right back in … to the same room, but this time at Oceania’s expense. We also checked in with the O rep to get our instructions for tomorrow and our bus assignment for the transfer to the ship … bus #1 at noon … woo hoo.
The important news is not what we did today, but what Insignia is doing even as I write this. That said, I’ll give a quick overview of our day before I get to that news.
In the span of two short hours, we left wintry temperatures behind for a summer-like day in Miami, Florida. And what a busy day it turned out to be ... starting shortly after 3:00a when, too excited to sleep, we got up and got going.
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Despite a short night of sleep, we are bright eyed and bushy tailed as we
get settled into our seats aboard UA1614. Let’s get this show on the road.
How do I tell the story of our day as succinctly as possible? Let’s see if this works …
Didn’t think I’d have time to do any RTW travel planning until we returned to our Port Aransas home pad. But I found myself with some spare time when we jiggled our Phaeton travels due to high winds and extended our stay in El Paso a few days.
So, I decided to clean out my email boxes … which led to finalizing plans for our two-days in Bali, Indonesia and our overnight junk cruise in Hạ Long Bay, Vietnam. I also have responses back from the companies I contacted in Guatemala and Nicaragua, but I need to find a couple of companions to join us before those plans can be finalized. A good start … but I still have a long — very long — way to go before I make a substantial dent in sightseeing plans for the entire itinerary.
I did get to put a “ ✔ ” next to another pre-RTW logistics item, though — accommodations for the one night we added in Miami. O is putting us up at the InterContinental Miami the night before we embark Insignia on January 6. So I splurged and booked the 4th of January there as well. Normally, I wouldn’t consider paying the hefty room rate the InterContinental charges. Since we scaled back on our time in Miami, however, I figured the budget could afford the special rate I found on the hotel’s website Monday. Besides, not having to move from one hotel to another after just one night will be worth the bigger dent in the wallet.
The InterContinental Miami is almost dead-center … it’s the building with the blue squares
on the façade. I took this photo from the NCL Jade when we called on Miami near
the end of our November 2015 Barcelona-to-Houston TransAtlantic cruise.
The only logistics for pre-voyage Miami that remains incomplete is renting a car. That falls under Mui’s bailiwick … he’ll take care of it in the next few weeks.
© 2015-2017 — All rights reserved by Erin Erkun.
It’s been a busy winter for us … traveling in the motorhome to see new-to-us parts of the US. We’ve been exploring Texas — heading further south and further west from our RV pad in Port Aransas — except for the week we left the country on a Caribbean cruise to celebrate Mui’s birthday. (You can read about it here, if interested … total of three posts.)
I’ve been spending free time during the road trip researching ports of call on our RTW itinerary. I made some headway, but there is certainly still a lot of work ahead of me. In the meantime, it’s been quiet on the blog … nothing exciting to write about. Until today.
Actually, I don’t know that exciting is the right description for today’s topic. But it sure gives me a sense of relief to know that not only have we decided on the dates for our pre-RTW Miami stay, but that we’ve taken care of a few of the associated logistics, too.
We’ve been waffling for months between staying a week in Miami … or staying two weeks … or staying just a couple of days. Well, today we decided to cut way back on our pre-voyage stay. O is already giving us a day by putting us up in Miami the night before we embark Insignia on 6 January. So, we’re adding just one additional day, making it a two-night stay. Nice as it would have been to do some sightseeing in and around Miami, we will likely have too many last minute things to do at home before such a momentous trip to be off gallivanting in Florida. We’ll do that another time.
We took time off from sightseeing this morning to handle some of the logistics associated with our decision. The flight to Miami on 4 January is booked — one-way award tickets from IAH to MIA … the July 6 return date doesn’t open for ticketing until August. We picked an early morning flight so that we can make the most of the day in Miami. Living in a motorhome, that means we need to put our “condo on wheels” in storage the day before we fly out. With that in mind, a hotel at IAH for 3 January was the next thing we took care of — ‘Pricelined’ a room as usual and got the Hyatt Place this time.
Feeling good about today’s accomplishments. We’ll deal with the rest of the pre- and post-voyage logistics at a later date … time to go have lunch at the Starlight Theater in the Terlingua Ghost Town.
© 2015-2017 — All rights reserved by Erin Erkun.
