Re Work on the driving itinerary

I have been speaking to a few friends who are locals, who have given me some great ideas, so modifying the itinerary a bit. Still need to work out from the 24th onwards. Tis gettng soo much closer

Part 1. - Google Map Link

• 17th November - Get off boat 7am ish, Pick up the car about 9 am and start driving.                   (total of 1009 km of driving)
• First stop 
• Tallahassee, FL -  430 km  quick lunch stop and obligatory pictures
• Second Stop - 
• Pensacola FL - 316 km
• Flora-Bama Lounge and oysterbar.  (Local recommendation)  - early dinner   17401 Perdido Key Drive, Pensacola, FL, United States
• Visit the beaches of the Gulf Coast
•  5:45 pm catch last Ferry out of Florida  

Part 2 - Google Map Link

• Gulfport, MS -  134 km - Brief fuel and break and obligatory pictures for being in a different state
• New Orleans, LA -  129 km. arrive about 8 pm if we get the last ferry or 10 pm if we miss it and have to go via Mobile.

• 18th November - Explore New Orleans.                                                                                   
• 1/2 day tour of  City and Plantations 
• Ghost tour
• Cocktail tour
• Dinner and explore Burbon street and the main city
• 19th November - Explore New Orleans 
• Cemetery tour/ voodoo Tour
• Vampire tour
• Walking city/ food tour/ Coooking??
• 20th November - Driving day start at 7am
• Breakfast in Baton Rouge - 129km
• Lafeyette, LA - 96km - -Brief fuel and break and obligatory pictures
• Houston, TX - 350km  - Aiming to arrive around lunch time 
• National Museum of Funeral history
• Water wall
• Beer can house
• San Antonio, TX - 300km arrive about 6pm. (total 875km day)
• Majestic Theatre - Night time
• River walk & dinner - Night time
• Buckhorn Saloon - Night time
• Hemis Fair Urban Park (Tower of Americas) - Night time
• Ripleys Haunted adventure - Night time
• 21st November -  Explore San Antonio
• http://historictexastours.com/
• Mission San Jose
• Mission Conception
• The Alamo 
• Natural Bridge Caverns - Just north of SA on I-35 
• Natural Bridge wildlife park ( driving zoo)
• Cascade Caverns with an underground waterfall.
• El Mercardo
• Bill Miller Bar B Q
• 22nd November - 
• Hill Country - Between San Antonio and Austin.. ( Ranch Day/ Rodeo???)
• Austin TX, - 126km
• Whole Foods grocery store on Lamar and 5th
•   Saltlick BBQ joint (Driftwood)
• Barton Springs
• Bats at sunset (Ann Richards Congress Ave. Bridge which is over Lady Bird Lake)
• 23rd November - Driving day
• Waco, TX 166km
• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum
• Masonic Grand Lodge - Museum
• Dr Pepper museum
• Dallas, TX 153km
• Texas school book depository 
• Keller's Drive-in
  Northwest Hwy and Abrams Rd, Dallas, TX
• Swiss Avenue Historic District
• Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament (Free upgrade code "frweb")
• Pegasus Sign
401 Commerce St, atop the Magnolia Hotel, Dallas, TX 75201 (Downtown Dallas)
• 24th November
• Wichita Falls, TX 226km
• Amarillo, TX - 362km
• Roswell, NM 346km
• Albuquerque, NM - 318km
• Flagstaff, AZ - 522km
• 25th November????
• 26th November - Arrive Las Vegas - 409km
• 27th November -  Shopping in Vegas
• 28th November -  Shopping in Vegas
• 29th November -  Fly Home

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82 Days till departure on Kid free holiday

With my continual blogging fail, this may be my last attempt at trying to blog a holiday.

We are 82 days until we take off on our Bec and Nando kid free holiday. Now I have some of the weirdest children in the world, as they didn't want to come on this trip as they would miss too much school. Even with making the trip so they would only miss a week.

Alas, we are now going on a 5 week jaunt taking in the likes of Las Vegas, Cancun, Orlando, Haiti, Jamaica, Cozumel, New Orleans, Texas, Vegas and home again.

I have booked all our flights, all hotels except for those of our road trip from Orlando to Vegas via New Orleans and Texas.  I haven't figured out how long we will take to do the drive so will sound this out over the next couple of posts to see what works best.

Conservatively we have 10 days to do the driving and see all the sites. And it is looking to be about 40ish hours of driving. Actual dates are 17th November and Fly out of Vegas on 29th November in the AM. But I want to get all my shopping done so have allocated 2 shopping days at the end (27th - 28th).

Plan A. - Google Map Link

• 17th November - We get off our cruise and pick up the car. We figure that we will just stay in Orlando for that day and night and start driving first thing on the Monday Morning 
• 18th November - Driving Day -  Start early (4 am) head out. End goal is to make it to New Orleans. Stopping in:
• Tallahassee, FL -  413km -Breakfast and obligatory pictures 
• Flora-Bama Lounge and oysterbar. 353km  (Local recomendation)  http://www.florabama.com 17401 Perdido Key Drive, Pensacola, FL, United States
• Mobile, AL -  392km - Lunch and obligatory pictures for being in a different state
• Gulfport, MS -  121km - Brief fuel and break and obligatory pictures for being in a different state
• New Orleans, LA -  129km. - Aiming to arrive around 2 pm
• Total of 1055km. A big day of driving
• Ghost tour
• Cocktail tour
• Dinner and explore Burbon street and the main city
• 19th November - Explore New Orleans - http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Attractions-g60864-Activities-c25-New_Orleans_Louisiana.html
• 1/2 day tour of  City and Plantations  http://www.toursbyisabelle.com/city-tour.html
• Cemetery tour/ voodoo Tour
• Vampire tour
• Walking city/ food tour
• Riverwalk Market place - Closed until 2014 so scratched from the list
• 20th November - Driving day start at 7am
• Breakfast in Baton Rouge - 129km
• Lafeyette, LA - 96km - -Brief fuel and break and obligatory pictures
• Houston, TX - 350km  - Aiming to arrive around lunch time 
• National Museum of Funeral history
• Water wall
• Beer can house
• San Antonio, TX - 300km arrive about 6pm. (total 875km day)
• Majestic Theatre
• River walk & dinner
• Buckhorn Saloon
• Hemis Fair Urban Park (Tower of Americas)
• Ripleys Haunted adventure?
• 21st November -  Explore San Antonio
• http://historictexastours.com/
• Mission San Jose
• Mission Conception
• The Alamo - http://www.thealamo.org
• Natural Bridge Caverns - Just north of SA on I-35 http://www.naturalbridgecaverns.com/
• Natural Bridge wildlife park ( driving zoo)
Cascade Caverns http://www.cascadecaverns.com/with an underground waterfall.
• El Mercardo
• Bill Miller Bar B Q
• 22nd November - 
• Hill Country - Between San Antonio and Austin.. ( Ranch Day/ Rodeo???)
• Austin TX, - 126km
• Whole Foods grocery store on Lamar and 5th
• Something cowboyish???
•  BBQ joint (Driftwood)- http://www.saltlickbbq.com/
• Barton Springs


• Bats at sunset (Ann Richards Congress Ave. Bridge which is over Lady Bird Lake)


• Waco, TX 166km
• Dallas, TX 153km
• Oaklahoma, OK 330km
• Amarillo, TX - 418km
• Roswell, NM 346km
• Albuquerque, NM - 318km
• Flagstaff, AZ - 522km
• Las Vegas, NV - 409km
• 23rd November????
• 24th November????
• 25th November????
• 26th November - Arrive Las Vegas
• 27th November -  Shopping in Vegas
• 28th November -  Shopping in Vegas
• 29th November -  Fly Home

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Blogging fail

I don't think I am really meant to be a blogger.

With so many problems with loosing all my blogs and data from the USA and South American trip, I thought I would be smart and just write everything up in work on my  tablet and upload it all when I got home. How wrong was I. I was diligently writing my blog every day until my tablet decided to  fail at encryption and require a factory reset,  no worries it will restore when I get back into internet range at home.

Nope... All gone. So I will have to upload my pics and do my best to remember everything.

But in a nutshell, I got sick and needed the maxalon. got sunburnt but had a ball and left the cruise in a wheel chair and plaster.

More details to come

Sail day T-1

So we sail out tomorrow.

I have packed most things my suitcase is at about 25kg then I have my little tote bag full of shoes and my backpack. Tammy and I will be taking a medium suitcase empty to bring back goodies...

I have to be up at 6 am to get to Tammy by 6:45 and to the bus by 7:30.

Internet is a funny at 35c per minute, so wil be brief check ins to let friends and family know we are still alive.

• Hair done
• Waxing and tinting done
• I pod has tunes
• transformer has books loaded
• Brought new undies
• moved Tammy's changed over cash into my bag from the glove box as I kept forgetting to give it to her.
• Put credit cards in my wallet as nearly left without them
• Have chickos for the bus ride up although think I will be sleeping as it's now midnight. I will take lots of pics.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something.. but doesn't matter cause I'm going on a boat....... A big BOAT....

Now I should really be going to bed

Night all and see you on the other side

4 days till sail

Only 4 more sleeps till we set sail.

Finished up work for the last week although need to go back to work Tuesday afternoon.

I started to pack and my suite case was filling quickly, so Tammy came over to help me transfer everything to space saver bags.

 have a Jumbo an two large bags filled up.

I still need to pack some things and still need to go and buy some stuff.

Outstanding list is:

• Shorts
• Drink bottles
• undies
• picnic cooler bag
• sandwich bags
• hat
• documents
• phone charger
• Camera and charger
• Neck pillow
• make up
• hair brush and hair ties

I'm thinking I need to take an extra empty suite case lol.

11 more sleeps

Only 11 sleeps to go.  I have printed out our bus tickets and also completed our on-line check in and printed our boarding passes.

I have brought some currency. I got USD $300 @ $1.005 per  Aussie dollar, so it cost me AUD $298.510.

I chose a mixture of $20, $10, $5, $1.

And I also brought some French Polynesian Francs or XPF as they are known in the currency world.. They will take a little getting used too. I got $25,000 Francs @ 83.00 Francs per Aussie dollar.

It seems that this currency come  in 500 and 1000 notes. So with my bad maths skills that makes them worth about $6 and $12 respectively.

Here is a pretty picture.

The Francs don't fit into my wallet so will have to come up with some where else to store them. The exchange place gave me a nice little baggy, so they may just stay in there.



I have borrowed a bag of dresses from Tammy and have given them all a refresh wash today, so they are all hanging up drying around the house.

I only have 4 more work days although that has slowly creped up to 4 and a bit days as there is an important meeting that I have to go to the day before we sail out. So I will head in for a 1/2 day.

I still need to sort out all my work stuff and do a bit of a hand over.

Off to get ready for for a friends wedding now

13 more sleeps till South Pacific girls get away

So thirteen more sleeps until we board our cruise.

Only 5 more days of work.. YAY!!!!

I have booked our drinks package. We have gone with the ultimate drink package USD $55 per person per night and completed our online check in and printed all our paper work.

After trawling around for parking in Sydney city, we have decided to catch the bus up. We scored a good deal with Greyhound bus leaving Canberra at 8am, with WiFi  power and USB $115 return for both of us. Get into Central grab a bite for lunch then make our way to Circular Quay.

I have packed my diving gear, power board, power converter, TSA locks and I have riffled through Tammy's wardrobe and picked out some of her dresses.

I have to make an appointment with my Dr to get my scripts filled. I still have to get my waxing and hair done but that's all booked in.

I'm going into change over money for some USD for tipping and some Francs for Vanuatu.

my tablet is loaded with lots of books to read.

Things I still need to pack:

•  The rest of my clothes
•  my crocks
• big drink bottles
•  little freezer bag for our day trips
• Sunscreen
• Beach Towel
• Laptop