G & J away from home

Monday, 23 March

It's hard to believe that we are now below the magic 4-weeks-to-go mark with only 27 sleeps until we drive away.  (First stage: Drive to Auckland.)

Today we went in to visit our travel agent, Chrystal, and finalised the last few items with her; Chinese visa, travel insurance, and the night-before-the-cruise hotel in Bucharest.

Gary with our travel agent, Chrystal

Chrystal also gave us a Lonely Planet Guide for Eastern Europe - a veritable doorstop of a book.  Looks like there's some bedtime reading ahead for us for the next 27 nights.

Gary is still working on our UK itinerary which is complicated by being mainly about visiting people, with a few places we would like to visit added in almost as an afterthought.  Our very short list of places to visit consists of:

Shuttleworth Collection

The Shuttleworth Collection is an aeronautical and automotive museum located at the Old Warden Aerodrome, Old Warden in Bedfordshire, England. It is one of the most prestigious in the world due to the variety of old and well-preserved aircraft.
-- Wikipedia

Falkirk Wheel

The Falkirk Wheel is a rotating boat lift in Scotland, connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal. Named after the nearby town of Falkirk in central Scotland, the lift opened in 2002, reconnecting the two canals for the first time since the 1930s as part of the Millennium Link project.
-- Wikipedia

Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park, in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, was the central site of the United Kingdom's Government Code and Cypher School ... which during the Second World War regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers � most importantly the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers.
-- Wikipedia

Barter Books

Barter Books is a second-hand bookshop located in the historic English market town of Alnwick, Northumberland ....  It has over 200,000 visitors a year, 40% of whom are from outside the area, and is one of the largest second-hand bookstores in Europe.

Barter Books hit the headlines in 2000 when the owner discovered, in a box of old books bought at an auction, an old World War II poster from 1939. The slogan, "Keep Calm and Carry On", and the simple design has turned it into an international phenomenon ...
-- Wikipedia

And it's way past time for me to start pre-scheduling the cruise blog posts.
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