Yet another cruise extension!

Well, even though we had no joy getting any sense out of the cruise company regarding their wacky pricing (they were advertising a cheaper fare from Dover to Auckland than from Fort Lauderdale to Auckland, but wouldn’t let us board at FL!) I eventually managed to speak to someone further up the chain but without any change in stance. 

Once again, we did the numbers and the cost of a few days in LA (a place we have been to, many times), added to the likely cost of a one way air fare from LA to NZ, plus our usual daily costs of food, fuel, badminton, night classes gas and electricity etc., we worked out that for the extra cost of extending our cruise yet again, right to Auckland, the difference was minimal! 

A powerful incentive was the feeling that we have already had such good contacts with several other cruisers, via the Cruise Critic website (more specifically, the Roll Call for our Dawn Princess cruise) that we cannot fail to cement several friendships.  As we are only in touch with those who are on that message board, that still leaves a fair few potentially new people to meet.  

By extending our cruise, we unfortunately lost the cabin we had previously booked from FL to LA, but a change of location shouldn’t take too much getting used to. 

As mentioned in the previous post, we are off to Broadbeach for a few days next week, where we are really looking forward to meeting some other cruisers.  Paula is also looking forward to the beautiful Australian mangoes and the Greek yoghurt. We are also looking forward to fresh prawns, straight off the boat, instead of the Vietnamese and Chinese prawns cultivated in puddles at the side of the road, normally available in NZ...

I suppose I should add a pic or two to liven this up, but rather stuck for appropriate ones until next week.

Another step forward.

Well, we just couldn’t face another 230 days without a break and as our only break so far this year was back in April, we decided to head back to Broadbeach (the southern end of the world famous Surfer’s Paradise, south of Brisbane, for those of you in the UK who are less aware of the local geography...).

We stayed at the Meriton Apartments just over a year ago with two other couples and Paula got really good value out of the superb heated indoor pool and I enjoyed the spa.  We only managed one session in the heated outdoor pool, on our last night, as they were working above it during the week, but we were impressed with it and the large spa too.  Needless to say, a return visit to the same place was an easy decision, even though we’ll be without our usual travelling and dining companions and partners in crime.

 

Thanks to the Cruise Critic message boards and our involvement with the Dawn Princess roll call for May 2011, we are in touch (albeit at a distance) with several fellow cruisers, so once we announced our intentions, very quickly, we were in a position to be involved in an opportunity to meet two or maybe three other couples whilst in Broadbeach. So, early November, we’ll have something to add to this travel/holiday/cruise blog and maybe a couple of fine weather photographs, just as the UK starts to get those horribly grey creeping cold evenings and early mornings.  Shudder....

The Meriton is only a two minute walk to the hub of Broadbeach where there are some great restaurants so we’ll be having a meal with four 2011 cruisers, possibly an Italian meal and we can just pretend we are in Europe for a couple of hours.