Preparation

A trip like this requires preparation on an entirely different level. We’ve had complicated trips before – last summer we flew to New York, took a cruise from there to Bermuda, rented a car in Newark, drove to Chicago via Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, took a train to Denver, rented another car, and drove back to SoCal. But none of these can hold a candle to preparing for a 6-month cruise. Just a few of the things to think about:
• How do we pay for this? This is where I acknowledge our good fortune in being in a position to afford a trip like this. I’m fully aware that most people cannot.
• How do we take care of recurring obligations like tax payments, car registration, etc.?
• Traveling with two school-age children, we need to school them for half a school year. How will that work?
• What are we going to do in all of these ports?
• How do we pack for this?

I’m not going to address the financial part beyond saying we talked to our trusted financial advisor to validate that we’re not doing anything incredibly stupid. And we purchased travel insurance to cover us in case we need to abort the trip for some reason (please no!). As for the rest:
• The house – we talked to a few people about house-sitting and will have a friend staying here. We were not comfortable with the house just being empty and unkempt for six months.
• Keeping up with bills is mostly handled with already set up online payments. There are some things that we’ll need to either prepay or ensure that we’re able to make a payment while traveling.
• The schooling preparation has been entirely handled by Elizabeth. We can’t do online learning because the Internet availability will be uncertain and the time zones will make it impossible. So we need to “home school” the kids for six months. With Elizabeth’s background as a teacher we take this very seriously. We’ll ensure that we meet all the grade-level requirements and will supplement the usual syllabus with learnings based on our travels.
• The research into activities in each port took months and I’m still sure that I am still missing cool things to do in each place. We used all kinds of online resources to figure out what the can’t miss activities and locales are in each port: blogs, Trip Advisor, reviews on multiple sites, cruise sites, and asking ChatGPT to write up an itinerary for various places. Then we decided if we wanted to use ship excursions (we had 32 prepaid excursions as part of our deal) or explore on our own for each locale. We’ve now get at least a basic plan for all of the port calls that we will make (all 94 of them!).
• Packing is something we’ve yet to think much about. We’ve traveled a lot and are pretty good minimalist packers. The clothes aren’t a huge deal, especially since as previously mentioned we’re not going to any truly cold climates. But there will also be a fair amount of “stuff” to support the schooling and entertainment for the boys. We’ve found lots of good tips on the Internet about maximizing space in a cruise ship cabin, from taking lots of magnetic hooks to swapping out the not-very-useful coffee table in the cabin for a collapsible storage box. We’ve done four in a cabin on shorter cruises, but this time we’ll have two cabins – a balcony and an interior right across the hall – so we will have double the closet space.Leer más