Well the time is fast approaching for me to leave for my next cruise. We have been working on all the details for this trip for a long time and it is hard to believe it is almost here. We were fortunate enough to have enough air miles for this trip and are going a combination of First Class and Business Class. There was only flight that we are going Coach and this flight is a short one -- only a couple of hours. Since we are using air miles, we don't have the most direct route.
We fly out Saturday, December 15 at 6:00 am. We will fly on U.S. Airways to Phoenix and then on to LAX. Once in LAX we transfer to United Airlines and will fly into Shanghai (PVG) where we will have to spend the night. When I first planned this itinerary I thought this wouldn't be bad and surely there was a hotel attached to the airport like there is at DFW. Well there is, but it didn't get very good reviews so I figured I needed to go to Plan B. I researched LOTS of hotels. Sometimes I think I probably do too much research. I finally decided to stay at Kerry Hotel. This hotel is part of the Shangri-La chain so I figured it couldn't be that bad. In addition to that I was able to use my Capital One points and stay there FREE. That was even better. As it got closer I got worried about getting a taxi to take us to the hotel. I kept reading horror stories about taxi drivers taking people a block away from the hotel and dropping them off or over charging them. I decided to contact the hotel and see what my transportation options were. I have arranged for the hotel to send a car to pick us up at the hotel and take us back to the airport the next morning. It is more than I would have to pay for a taxi but I figured the peace of mind was worth it. This will be a quick stay because our flight lands at 5:45 pm on December 16 and our flight leaves December 17 at 8:45 am. The hotel recommended that we leave the hotel 3 hours prior to our flight so this will be a very quick night.
On December 17 we fly with Thai Airways from Shanghai (PVG) to Bangkok (BKK) and then on to Sydney (SYD). We arrive in Sydney on December 18 at 7:45 am. We have also arranged for the Shangri-La in Sydney to pick us up at the airport. We will be staying there 1 night before boarding our ship on December 19 for our 14 night cruise around New Zealand. We have a few excursions booked for a few ports but still need to decide what we will be doing on the others.
At the end of the cruise we will be staying at the Shangri-La in Sydney for 2 nights before heading home. We haven't made all our plans for those 2 nights yet. Krista is going on the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb the first evening. We have talked about going to the Zoo for a back stage tour. I probably need to get that booked. I'm not sure if it would be available on a walk-up basis. In addition to this, we are going to be able to meet up with some people that we met on our Alaska Cruisetour in 2011 -- they live in Sydney and are going to come see us when we are there. We are excited about seeing them.
I will try to post on a daily basis if possible. Krista also has a blog and usually posts on hers regularly as well. There is a link to her blog on the front page of my blog. You might want to check it out. I will be posting pictures on facebook. If you aren't my friend on facebook, you won't be able to see them. I do this to save on the time I have to be on-line and this seems to work pretty easy. If I get internet time that I don't have to pay for I will try and post some pictures here on the blog if I can figure out how to do it.
I have told you about our flights getting to Sydney. The flights returning from Sydney are similar. We leave Sydney on the afternoon of January 4, 2013 and arrive back to DFW around 9:00 pm on January 5, 2013.
Thai Airways: Sydney-Bangkok; Bangkok-Shanghai
Al Nippon Airways: Shanghai-Tokyo
United Airlines: Tokyo-Chicago; Chicago-DFW
So you can see we have lots of flights on this trip. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride...........
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