Hove1959

Hi Sam Just done our Covid tests too, and all OK. Phew! We are boarding at 1200 tomorrow. 5 30 at the aft bar sounds great. See you then, unless we bump into you around the ship. Our friend Martin, who is travelling with us, may come along. See you soon Kevan and Ian

Hi Sam. We arrived in Auckland this evening. Staying at the M Social opposite the cruise terminal. Only a 5 minute walk to board the Eclipse on Saturday. Amazing that whave a 12 night cruise after all we have done already. Did a road trip from Sydney to the Blue Mountains and then up the coast to see friends and family. Spent time with all 4 of my cousins. Hope you had a great trip down on Emirates. See you soon. We are on Deck 7 midships Kevan and Ian

Hi Sam and Huw. Hope you had a great Christmas and New Year. You must be very excited about heading to Auckland soon. We have had a great week in Sydney. Our New Year's Eve dinner cruise on the harbour was wonderful. A dream come true! Eclipse was in Sydney today, leaving for the cruise before ours. We drove up to the Blue Mountains today so did not see it unfortunately. Got a great pic from the Sydney Harbour webcam of it xx

Hi Sam and Huw Great to hear from you! We are still in the UK. We go up to Heathrow for the night on Christmas Eve. Fly on Singapore Airlines at 1100 on Christmas Day. Can't wait! We booked the cruise 21 months ago. No doubt you are getting excited too. Have a good trip down. Look forward to seeing you on board. Have a Merry Christmas ! Kevan and Ian

Paid the balance for our cruise yesterday. It's coming round really quickly now. Can't wait to get on board. Hi to Sam and Huw. Not seen you here for a while. Hope all is well x

That sounds like a great trip! We will be on the harbour for NYE on a Captain Cook dinner cruise. We'll give you a wave! It's been a dream for 40 years. It was never possible when we were working as we worked in industries ( travel and retail) where we were not allowed to take holiday over Christmas and NYE as they were our busiest period. We fly out of the UK to Sydney on Christmas Day which will be different!

Hi MikeLeeJames. Welcome to the group.

Hi Sam and Huw It was so good to meet you last week. Thank you again for such a lovely stay. Only realised it was you on the M5 Sam, as you whizzed by. Hope you had a nice break. We had a great time in Bristol catching up with friends and family. Look forward to seeing you on Eclipse in January! Kevan and Ian

Posspet. Thanks for the warning

Hi Sam Hope you are both well. Look forward to meeting you on the 19th. Understand Ian spoke to you on the phone recently. Just looked at the "tracker" for our flights to Sydney. 99 days away now. It's coming around quickly! Kevan

No problem. Guessed you were away in Benidorm. Hope you had a good time. Great to hear you have extended your trip at each end. Any plans for the extra time in Oz? We will be away for a total of 6 weeks. One advantage of being retired! I have dreamed of being in Sydney for NYE for 40 years but was never allowed to take holiday in December as I worked for airlines most of my life, and then retail as it was embargoed due it being our busiest time of the year. Only 16 weeks until we leave LHR now. Can't wait! Kevan

Brighton Pride parade was great fun, having been cancelled the 2 previous years due Covid. Great to see the city busy again. Good to hear you have sorted out your flights for OZ/NZ. Emirates are a great airline. We have flown on them in the past down to OZ. Are you doing any stopovers en route? Kevan

We've never been to Benidorm! Have fun. Fingers crossed for the passport! We are heading over to Brighton tomorrow to watch the Pride parade. Should be fun, and the weather is looking great. We don't go to the park any more ( since they started charging an entry fee) We'll go for lunch in the Lanes and to a pub for a drink afterwards. Kevan

Hi Sam Shame to hear you have cancelled your Easyjet flights. To be honest it does look dodgy flying with BA too, at the moment. Thankfully our flight back from Alicante in May all went smoothly. Glad we have no other flights booked until December. Hopefully they will have sorted staffing issues at airports by then! Are you still going to France on your Jet2 holiday or have you changed the destination? Travel on trains is a lottery at the moment with the strikes, and channel crossing on the ferries is not much better. Hope this is all good for your business, with people preferring to stay in the UK this summer. Good to hear you have sorted out your visas for Oz. It is really efficient these days. I remember having to fill out loads of forms and go in person to Australia House in London back in the 80s. Hope you get your Oz and NZ flights sorted soon. Are you going to do any stopovers, or going straight through? Our flights are now a little cheaper than when we booked, but nothing we can do about it. At least we got all the airlines and timings that suit us. All the best for now Kevan

Really looking forward to meeting you both too. Ian's department was based in Leicester but he worked from home, or was travelling round the country auditing Europcar branches. He also went to Bushey on occasions for meetings. Guess you are on countdown to your trip to France now. Have you confirmed your flights for Australia and NZ yet? We have sorted out our Australian visas. Just need to do the NZ ones. Still plenty of time.