With enough effort you can justify anything.

When retirement was looking like a possibility, and not just something to dream about in the distant future, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. We would go on a world cruise on Queen Mary 2. Every year when her world cruise itinerary would be published I would study every port and imagine us visiting those exotic places.

When retirement finally did arrive, we examined the cost of the Queen Mary 2 World Voyage in Princess Grill, and declared it to not be compatible with our projected finances. Disappointment set in. However Brian came to the rescue as always. He was looking at a previous Queen Mary 2 World Voyage brochure (they populate our house), and suggested that we do the segment of the world cruise that involves going around the Horn. We have done 3 world cruise segments before –Dubai to Hong Kong on Queen Mary 2 in 2010, the maiden transatlantic crossing on Queen Elizabeth in 2011, and Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale on Queen Victoria in 2012. I was able to convince myself that we really didn’t want to be away from home for months on end, and we would do the world voyage, but over several years in segments.

The next problem was that Queen Mary 2 was not going around the Horn in 2017. Queen Victoria was going as far as the Straits of Magellan, but in the spirit of compromise I emailed our wonderful travel agent Sue, and asked her to book us a Princess Grill cabin on the Fort Lauderdale to Valparaiso segment of Queen Victoria’s world voyage. By later that afternoon we had our booking confirmation and cabin number. It may not be a world voyage, but it was a fantastic itinerary on a beautiful ship so all was well with the world.

Starting in Fort Lauderdale meant we could fly in early and stay with friends in Miami for a couple of days so we didn’t have to do a transatlantic flight in the middle of winter, and risk missing the boat because Heathrow had been closed due to 2 inches of snow. We could also stock up on provisions for the trip in Miami, and avoid a bit of the Idaho winter. Although we were a bit disappointed that we were not going around the Horn as such, the Straights of Magellan were good enough for me, and we would get to see the penguins in Punta Arenas. The itinerary also included a trip up the Amazon to Manaus, something I have always wanted to do, and the possibility of Sue booking us an overland trip to Iguassu Falls. I am a huge waterfall fan and had been enchanted by the Falls on a previous trip to Buenos Aires. I wanted Brian to see them too. So that was that, we were all set to go on our perfect world cruise segment in the perfect cabin.

The Brian took another look at the Queen Victoria world voyage itinerary, and started muttering about down grading our cabin and staying on the ship until Sydney. I checked the prices out on line, and sure enough we could book a Britannia grade cabin for the Fort Lauderdale to Sydney section for the same cost of the Princess Grill suite. It was a no brainer and I was about to email Sue when I studied the itinerary further.

We could stay on until Los Angeles, and get to see New Zealand for a significant extra cost. However when you factored in the expense of airfares home from Sydney, and the additional cost of doing a cruise around New Zealand at a later date, all of a sudden the extra time on board made fiscal sense. Brian was not that easy to convince, but the thought of avoiding a long haul flight form Sydney to Idaho, and 2 days snorkeling in Hawaii convinced him, and so off went the email to Sue. She replied right back that she had secured a guarantee balcony cabin for us. That meant that we definitely had a cabin, but we could not chose which specific one. We would only find out closer to sailing which one had been allocated to us. A risk we were willing to take – we were now going to be on board for 80 days. Across the world in 80 days!!!!!!!!!!!

The rationalization didn’t end there. I had been looking at the Cunard web site to see if there was information about the enrichment speakers for our voyage, and noticed an extremely reasonable price for the Southampton to Fort Lauderdale segment of the world voyage. In no time I had convinced myself that it would be cheaper than staying home (not true), that we could use frequent flyer miles to London, we could use our Expedia discount at a hotel in Southampton, there would be less snow this winter, and that the flight from Idaho to London really wasn’t that awful. This didn’t convince Brian, plus he also wanted to factor in the reality that he had agreed to work part time for the first 2 weeks of January, and that there would therefore also be a loss of income.

Brian is a very good man. A few days later he acknowledged that I had had a very difficult time over the past few months dealing with my mother’s death and sorting out her estate in Scotland, and he knew I really, really, really wanted to do a whole world cruise, so he told me to email Sue again and book the extra segment. This meant that I could no longer really call my blog “Across the World in 80 Days”, as it would now be 91 days, but it meant that we would be on board for more than 89 days, Cunard’s definition of the Queen Victoria 2017 World Cruise. So now we really are going on our post retirement world cruise. What fun!

I decided not to change the title of the blog to “Across the World in 91 Days”, because that just doesn’t sound right. Besides, the music is already stuck in my head. I hope people understand the need for poetic license.