As of yesterday. we have exactly four weeks until we depart for Ft. Lauderdale. There is not a lot going on from a trip planning perspective, there is nothing for us to do for this trip but wait until the cruise date arrives. It is a little odd, we are normally working through some last minute details for either a pre-cruise stay or a post-cruise stay, or for some of the sights we would like to see on our own at port stops along the way.
Since we are not going for any time before or staying after the cruise, we don’t have those plans to deal with. Same for stops along the way, we are doing Viking excursions at all of the ports, so again, there is nothing for us to plan. The only item we are still working on is trying to figure out Mass times for Christmas Day in Cozumel, and also for trying to go to Mass on Saturday evening while we are in Cabo San Lucas.
There is just not a lot of online information available for the Catholic Churches in Cozumel, none have dedicated websites. The reality is that we don’t even know the Christmas Mass schedule for our church here in Lexington yet, it is just too early. I guess it is no surprise we can’t figure that information out for Cozumel either. The largest Catholic church in Cozumel has a Facebook Page, so we will look at that the week before we leave. Hopefully, by then, something will be posted for their Christmas Mass times.
We have been monitoring our flights on Delta. As we have seen from past trips, the flight times have gone through a few schedule changes, nothing significant. Both the departing flight from Columbia to Ft. Lauderdale, and the return flight back from Los Angeles have had their departure times changed, the first one is leaving earlier and the flight back is leaving a little later, but nothing that impacts any connecting fights, only some changes to the layover durations.
We did appear to have an airplane type change for our flight that leaves from Atlanta to Columbia, we had initially chosen a middle and aisle seat, but in looking at the flights today, there is now a two-seat row on one side of the plane, and we were able to move forward one row and select the two-seat side, eliminating having to deal with another passenger in the original three seat row configuration. If that had been a choice originally, we would have selected the two seat side initially, so without looking back at the details, the airplane type must have been changed to another model with the two-seat rows on one side.
Even though this trip takes place over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, and we will of course be gone, we made the decision to go ahead and put up some outside Christmas decorations at the house yesterday. We still want to enjoy the pre-Christmas festivities even though we will be gone for Christmas Day. We have not yet made a decision on putting up a Christmas Tree, but we did look at some yesterday at Lowe’s, and the prices are ridiculous for live tees this year. Maybe they were just as bad last year, but we did not even price them knowing we would be away on the Transatlantic cruise for most of December, arriving back home on December 23 from that trip. Last year we did not even consider putting up a tree after we got home.
We may opt to put up a small artificial tree we purchased when our cat Sophie was a kitten and we needed something she would not destroy climbing in it. For the cruise, so we can enjoy Christmas on the ship, we did purchase a small two-foot artificial tree from Lidl this past Saturday, it even has battery operated LED lights. We had already purchased something that was much smaller, but this seems more appropriate to take, and for $7.99, it is disposable, and will not be returning with us after the cruise.
It is a little ironic that this year, we will be getting on the same ship, the Viking Neptune, on the same day, December 23rd that we got off of last year at the end of our Transatlantic cruise from Barcelona. The ship will also be heading on the same Itinerary as last year, the initial segment of Viking’s World Cruise through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles. Apparently, not everyone starts the World Cruis in Ft. Lauderdale, it appears that some opt to start their World Cruise in Los Angeles, so there are a number of cabins available for this portion of the cruise. We think that is why the pricing seemed reasonable, Viking was just trying to fill any available cabins for this segment.
That is about all for now. Since there is not much to do from here on out, we will probably only add one more update before we leave, probably a couple of days out, unless something happens that we need to report on beforehand. Maybe by then, we will have our cabin assignment since we purchased a Guarantee Cabin, and according to the confirmation we received from Viking, our room may be assigned as late as the day we arrive at the ship, but it could be earlier.
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