Around the World Trip begins!

Tomorrow, we embark on a 23 day cruise to Australia on Cunard’s Queen Victoria. This will be a trip of a lifetime for us. Our first to cross the equator and the International Dateline. We’ll celebrate Valentine’s Day and a birthday on the cruise and mark a milestone wedding anniversary afterwards.

Since Cunard has a very formal dress code after 5 PM, lots of dresses, ties, shirts, and shoes were necessary.

The plan is to ship some of those clothes and suitcases back to Texas after the cruise and to take a one month tour of Australia and New Zealand. We will return to the Islands slowly, with a three day stop in Dubai and four days in New York City. We’ll celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary in NYC!

You won’t believe how we spent our first night: we went to the “first dim sum house in the US,” climbed back up Nob Hill, and then slept the clock around!

Or… at least Larry slept all the way through. I did my usual: sleep 3 1/2 hours, read for 2 to 3 hours. Repeat.

We had breakfast by 8 AM this morning in the hotel, the iconic Fairmont. There’s a 2 hour time difference from Texas – 4 hours from Virgin Gorda. It felt like our usual late brunch, instead if an 8 AM breakfast.