Diamond Princess arrives in Sydney

The first of the international ships has arrived in Sydney to mark the beginning of the "wave" season for 2015/2016 in Australia.

We cruised on the Diamond Princess in January this year and had a fabulous cruise to Tasmania.

Excitement for our Pacific Aria cruise is building with the E-tickets available for printing from the 8th October 2015.I still haven't decided on any shore tours and are compiling a list of private tours to consider. The P&O tours are now available to book via the cruise control so that helps in giving us some ideas.

I have also started sorting out my kindle, archiving books I've read and downloading new ones. I use both Amazon and Smashwords.
I usually go for mystery books and thought I'd have a look for some with a cruising theme. There are quite a few and have downloaded the following free ones. I might post a separate entry for the others

Cruise ship visits to Luganville, Vanuatu

An ongoing upgrade of the wharf at Luganville has seen a couple of recent cancellation of cruise visits. The Vanuatu Daily Posts reports that the wharf should be finished at the end of November 2015. With the Pacific Aria scheduled in early December, fingers crossed that they are no last minute itinerary changes.

For the full story from the Vanuatu Daily Post 

Cruise Bag Tags

After seeing a post on Facebook, I decided to order some bag tags for our next upcoming cruise.
I have ordered them from http://www.cruisebagtags.com/au/
They have them sized both for Princess/P&O as well as Royal Caribbean/Celebrity so you choose which you need. The only problem I have is there is a minimum order of 4 of each type, which is a shame as I wanted to order a single one of different sorts to check them out as well as buying the P&O ones. They have a single flat rate postage for Australia and I'll report back next week if they turn up.

Vanuatu Explorer Itinerary

Our up-coming cruise on the P&O Pacific Aria is only 11 weeks away.
The cruise is the Vanuatu Explorer, leaving from Brisbane Australia on the 7th December 2015.

The itinerary is as follows...

Over the next few weekends I'll try to shortlist some shore tours. We have cruised to Vila, Mystery Island and Isle of Pines previously, so the two new ports will be exciting to see.

85 sleeps to go...final cruise for Ryndam

This week I made the final payment on our upcoming cruise. Just waiting for the final receipt to come through from our travel agent on Monday.
Finally received an email that my son's passport is on it's way, so that was the last hurdle before choosing shore tours and packing.

With 85 sleeps to go, today marks the final trip from Harwich of the HAL ship Ryndam. She's on her final cruise bound for Singapore where she will transform into P&O Pacific Aria, bound for Australia.

The final itinerary for any one interested in such things is:
Sat Sep 12 07:00am to 04:00pm (Harwich), 
Sun Sep 13 07:00am to 04:00pm (Rotterdam)
Mon Sep 14 to Tue Sep 15 (At Sea), 
Wed Sep 16 10:00am to 05:00pm (Leixoes), 
Thu Sep 17 08:00am to 05:00pm (Lisbon), 
Fri Sep 18 12:00pm to 10:00pm (Cadiz), 
Sat Sep 19 08:00am to 06:00pm (Gibraltar), 
Sun Sep 20 08:00am to 06:00pm (Almeria), 
Mon Sep 21 08:00am to 05:00pm (Cartagena), 
Tue Sep 22 08:00am to 05:00pm (Palma de Mallorca), 
Wed Sep 23 07:00am to 06:00pm (Barcelona), 
Thu Sep 24 (At Sea), 
Fri Sep 25 07:00am to 07:00pm (Livorno), 
Sat Sep 26 08:00am to 09:00pm (Rome/Civitavecchia), 
Sun Sep 27 08:00am to 06:00pm (Naples), 
Mon Sep 28 08:00am to 05:00pm (Taormina), 
Tue Sep 29 (At Sea), 
Wed Sep 30 08:00am to 05:00pm (Corfu), 
Thu Oct 01 08:00am to 03:00pm (Kotor), 
Fri Oct 02 07:00am to 03:00pm (Split), 
Sat Oct 03 07:00am to 04:30pm (Venice), 
Sun Oct 04 10:00am to 06:00pm (Split), 
Mon Oct 05 08:00am to 05:00pm (Dubrovnik), 
Tue Oct 06 08:00am to 05:00pm (Corfu), 
Wed Oct 07 to Thu Oct 08 (At Sea), 
Fri Oct 09 06:00am to 06:00pm (Transit the Suez Canal), 
Sat Oct 10 (At Sea), 
Sun Oct 11 07:00am to 06:00pm (Al Aqaba), 
Mon Oct 12 to Thu Oct 15 (At Sea), 
Fri Oct 16 08:00am to 06:00pm (Salalah), 
Sat Oct 17 (At Sea), 
Sun Oct 18 08:00am to 06:00pm (Muscat), 
Mon Oct 19 to Tue Oct 20 (At Sea), 
Wed Oct 21 08:00am to 05:00pm (Mormugao), 
Thu Oct 22 08:00am to 05:00pm (Mangalore), 
Fri Oct 23 08:00am to 05:00pm (Cochin), 
Sat Oct 24 (At Sea), 
Sun Oct 25 08:00am to 05:00pm (Colombo), 
Mon Oct 26 to Wed Oct 28 (At Sea), 
Thu Oct 29 08:00am to 05:00pm (George Town), 
Fri Oct 30 08:00am to 05:00pm (Port Kelang), 
Sat Oct 31 07:00am (Singapore, arrive)

Map from HAL.