Three and a half weeks to go....not that we're counting

Okay, we've now officially stopped buying clothes etc to take with us so we thought it would be a good idea to see if 1. it all fitted in the suitcases and 2. that each suitcase was below BA's baggage allowance of 23kgs. We've flown quite a lot with Ryanair and are used to their allowance of 15kgs so 23kgs seems like an extravagance, but as you can see from the picture, we seem to have quite a bit of stuff.  Well it is quite a long trip....

A few minutes later and the cases are shut ready for the weigh-in.  One is bang on 23kgs and the other is 15kgs so we've got no decisions to make about leaving stuff behind.as, even allowing for toiletries, there's still a few kilos of spare case space.  Plus with BA you can take a handbag as well as a piece of hand luggage each so it all looks like our luggage is sorted.  Might even be room for that extra pair of shoes......

Preparations

So what to take? Some quick "googling" seems to suggest that for the Alaskan section we should take clothes which we can layer plus obviously waterproof jackets. The adverts for Alaskan cruises make much of the fact that you can sunbathe while gliding past a glacier, but we're under no illusions that we are at the tail end of the cruise season for that area of the world so I think that if its dry weather we'll consider it a bonus! Don't expect any swimwear pics to appear on our blog that week!  Which is a pity because that's when we'll be at our slimmest before we've had too many cruise ship meals and snacks........

For the second leg, it will gradually get warmer as we head south so we'll need to shed layers but the waterproof jackets may still come in to their own as the rainfall graphs for Mexico show an enormous spike in September so we may well find out why the rainforests got their name!  

As it looks like cruising is becoming a favourite way to holiday, a tux has now been purchased to replace the lounge suit along with a new evening dress which is reasonably uncrushable and, more imprtantly, lightweight.  Some time in the next couple of weeks we'll have a trial paking session so that we can add, or more likely, remove clothes and shoes to get us below the weight allowance.








 

5 weeks to go

Approaching 50 years on the planet FAST we have decided that working hard should pay some rewards and so we have booked a 4 week back to back cruise starting in Las Vegas. I know some of you will be thinking that Las Vegas is no where near the ocean, but we are starting with 3 days there then flying to Seatlle to catch the BIG boat. Heading from there to Canada & Alaska and then south down the Californian coast to Mexico, Costa Rica and then east through the Panama Canal before finally ending up in Florida and flying home from Miami.

 Although we've cruised several times, we've never cruised with this particular line (Celebrity Cruises), nor have we been away for so long before. With only a 23kg baggage allowance its going to be difficult deciding what to take especially as we'll be going from what will probably be quite chilly weather in an Alaskan autumn to hot and humid when we reach Central America. Tough decisions to make before we even leave home!

Its gonna be a tough job but someone has to do it, swabbing the decks