Although there's a few months yet before we actually sail, we have begun to make preparations for the trip. First was to prepare an itinerary of the ports we will visit and begin to plan our activities in each one We want to dive in quite a few places so we will be taking our diving kit with us. One of the benefits of cruising in and out of the UK is that luggage restrictions really don't apply. We can take as much luggage as we like and can fit into our cabin. Anyway, more about packing later..... for now we have 38 ports to plan some of which are 2 day visits. I have booked 3 ship's tours ahead of time. We generally avoid ship's tours because they are expensive and we dislike being part of a big group. However,, there were three trips offered by P&O that were either not available by other means or were just too convenient to pass up so we have booked them. In other ports I have emailed ahead arranging private tours or making arrangements with dive operators. In addition we have decided that we have the opportunity in the North Island of New Zealand to make a more in depth exploration by getting off the ship and "doing our own thing" for 6 days. So we will leave Aurora in Auckland and rejoin her in Melbourne. There is no doubt that we will get a great overview of a lot of places on this voyage but equally no doubt that we will want to go back to many and explore in more depth with more time available. Australia is one such place, Hawaii another, but there are going to be more.....

It has been really enjoyable researching each port and deciding what we want to see and how best to do it. Tripadvisor has been a great resource as have other blogs and Cruisecritic boards. It has always been possible to arrange private tours for less money than the official tours and for much smaller groups. I'll detail what we do, who with and what it cost as we go along.

Visas have been easy for this trip as we've only needed two in advance and one of those we already had: USA. The other was for Australia and that can be done online and is free. No vaccinations required and no malaria tablets either. A great result!

Other things to plan have been: travel insurance - we have upgraded the insurance offered by our bank, Lloyds. Getting to and from Southampton - hiring a car on 2 x one way drives - much cheaper than any of the other options. We pay all of our bills online these days so that makes it easy. Our younger daughter is living at home this year so the house is taken care of....

I will write about our packing planning nearer departure time. For now, we are in good shape and feeling both nervous and excited about being on the high seas for such a long time.