In Part 1 I went over how we ended up choosing this cruise. How Marilyn found it while doing research for one of her clients. I suppose that is another one of the advantages to working with a Professional Cruise Agent, when they are looking for cruises for other people they find dozens of “hidden gems” like this one. I know I’ll have more to say about getting from there to here but since we leave in less than 48 hours I’ll say a bit about our last minute cruise preparations. (Did I mention that our flight leaves at 5:30 Monday morning?)
One of the most important things is to make sure that all of our clients are taken care of. Over the last week or so Marilyn checked with departing clients to make sure they had all their documents, answered any last minute questions and made sure the had the contact information for Lee and Diane in the Raleigh office if the needed anything while we are gone. She also copied Lee and Diane on any information they would need to help any current clients who are looking for a cruise but haven’t finalized their plans yet and made sure her clients would be comfortable contacting the Raleigh office with any questions or payments. Marilyn also finished up (she is on the phone behind me right now) some work for clients who needed to add another cabin to their cruise and send some information to another couple about a cruise for this summer with their grandson. We will be putting our “out of office” messages on the phone and email shortly (again, letting people know that they can contact Lee and Diane for assistance).
We still have a little packing to do but we are almost done. We started a little earlier than usual because we are going for 10 nights and we only want to check 1 bag. (I don’t like paying baggage fees any more than you do.) – Some of you may have one of Marilyn’s packing lists from a few years ago. I think we will try to do an update when we get back.
We have completed our pre-boarding registration. Princess calls it the “Cruise Personalizer ” . We printed our cruise boarding pass and luggage tags. We will follow the instructions for attaching the tags and then cover it with clear packing tape – this seems to be working for everyone pretty well. I think I’ll print an extra one to take with us in case this one comes off in transit. We printed up our airline boarding pass and will recheck our flights tomorrow.
I went online and had the post office hold our mail until the day we return. If you have not done this, you really should. Its quick and easy and the post office delivers the mail right to you on the day you specify, and you can set it up in advance.
We set up “cat sitting” with our daughter and let the neighbors know we would be gone.
We also turned on “international dialing” with our cell phone company. We don’t normally travel with our cell phone, but we use it for more than calls these days and, we will be meeting up with some clients from another ship when we are in the same port together, for a shared shore excursion through ShoreTrips, so I thought I would like to have it this time. We should be able to use it on board the ship if we want. Calls will cost us $2.49/minute (as of this writing) which can add up pretty fast if you end up on the line with your 4 year old grandson, so we probably won’t use it much.
One thing I did not do soon enough was to check to see which credit card we have has the lowest exchange fees for foreign transactions. It won’t make much difference on this trip as we are only picking up a couple of small things for our grand kids. I have seen fees as high as 4% but there may be higher I suppose. I think I have one that is only 2.25% but I just found out that Capital One apparently has 0%!!! Guess I’ll be getting one of those before the next trip. In case you are not aware, you should try to carry a VISA and/or MasterCard when traveling outside the US (in addition to your preferred card if it is not one of those) as many foreign merchants can only process those cards.
Speaking of credit cards. I made sure all the bills were paid that might be due while we are gone and for the week or so after we are back (don’t want to miss anything).
So I guess there is not much more left to do, although I’m sure we will fill tomorrow up with things I have not though of yet. I have not set my self up to “live blog” this trip so I doubt that I’ll be posting until we get back, I expect that we will have some wonderful tails to tell, until then “Aloha”.
