Our Around the World Adventure Begins - January 2, 2024

 What is wrong with this picture?

I talked this beautiful young model into posing with the luggage we are taking on our flight to Fort Lauderdale for our 128 day cruise. I know we are famous for traveling light, but this is ridiculous.

I pretty much let the cat out of the bag with yesterdays post, but here is visible proof there really is more luggage. We received a number of perks for booking the cruise over 10 months ago and one of the was free luggage pick-up, delivery to the ship and shipment back home when the cruise is over.

So, what about the boxes? Linda has spent the equivalent of days (she has verified that statement - Accurate Bob) on the Facebook group about the cruise and has participated in a number of Zoom meetings about the cruise. She discovered that many of the SERIOUS cruisers on these longer cruises typically ship there belongings not in luggage but in cardboard boxes. The reason is the boxes can be broken down onboard and easily stored under bed while holding more than the carry-on luggage you need to use to fit it under the bed. The recommended box was a heavy duty packing box from Home Depot. They come in different sizes and Linda opted for the medium size.

We ended up filling two boxes and a carry-on bag. Detail person that she is, Linda kept a complete inventory of what went into which box, hence the A and B labels. There was 50 pound weight limit and A weighing 47.5 lbs. and B weighing 45 lbs. The carry-on weighed 20 lbs. with the great thing being we would not be lugging around any of those pounds.

The actual shipping is handled by UPS and the progress of the shipment can be followed on the UPS tracking webpage. However, Linda learned that most people place an AirTag on each box or piece of luggage. When you are leaving on a 128 day cruise it can be a major problem if you discover your luggage is current in some unknown place in the greater universe.

Linda kept a careful watch on the progress of our luggage as it moved from Texas to Florida. 

Talk about having that good feeling which comes from knowing your luggage is being well taken care of. Seeing all three pieces near each other in a warehouse - Priceless. Thank You Luggage Forward and Holland America. Now if they are in our room when we board the ship it will just be icing on the cake.

It has been tradition that we post a selfie onboard our flights just to prove we really are on our way.

We were in the way back, but not in the way, way back, being in the next to last row of the plane. It was a full flight and I timed it from the time the fasten seatbelt light went off until we entered the terminal from the jetway and it was 15 minutes. There is a distinct advantage to making sure we never have tight connections. In this case it is a Smart Linda and Lucky Bob.

Linda has read that the boarding process on these Grand Voyages always take much longer than for normal cruises due to confirmation of all the required Visas, vaccinations, required forms, etc. But looking at it from the positive side, by this time tomorrow we should be already sailing towards South America. Meaning that all the little bumps along the road of getting to that point will be in the past.