Hello to all!

It is one month until we set sail (figuratively...) for our newest adventure. We will spend an overnight in Los Angeles prior to sailing. 

We decided to begin this blog to document our around-the-world cruise - mainly so I can remember a lot of what we did for more than a few weeks after our return (getting older is not for sissies...).

Bonnie and I hope you all enjoy following along with our travels. We have some exciting places to visit and exciting things to discover and to do.

I chose this blog engine because it appears to offer more flexibility than the one I used for our South America, Antarctica, and the Amazon trip last year. I hope I chose well. There is a place below for comments on any of the posts or just to drop us a note to say hello. Please feel free to do so. Our normal email addresses are also in use and available to us.

Speaking of email, since we will be on a ship for most of the journey, we are certain to get flaky Internet service - usually sloooow and often sporadic. We will brace up and do our best to make do. Perhaps we will be surprised and find that the new cruise line we are using has better Internet, but that is our hope.

Many of you know that we have become fond of Holland America Lines ships over the past years and their great food and service; however, we could not find an itinerary that we liked from among their offerings the past few years, so this year we opted for something new - Silversea Cruise Lines and the ms Silver Whisper.

The itinerary gets us around the Cape of Good Hope and southern Africa. Before the Ebola crisis we were going to come up the west coast of Africa, but about a month ago the cruise line made the decision to break off of Africa after we visit Namibia (a wise move, we think) and pick up additional ports in the Atlantic and the Caribbean. We are disappointed that we won't get to some of the African countries that helped us choose this itinerary, but we are not disappointed to away from the Ebola-stricken areas. Our hearts go out to those people, but it is what it is and we applaud the cruise line for taking that step to protect its passengers.

We had originally booked this trip based on NOT going through the Suez Canal since we have spent so much time in the Mediterranean. We wanted to see more of Africa and thought this would be a way to do it. Well, best laid plans and all that... but we are just as happy that we can avoid the dicey areas and still claim an around-the-world trip.

I found a way to get a picture of our cruise itinerary in a format that will give you some idea of where we will be traveling to.

Here it is:



Los Angeles  and west to Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Singapore, and continuing west to the east coast of Africa, then around Cape Horn and across the Atlantic and the Caribbean to Fort Lauderdale and home.

You can see by the red line how the Ebola crisis has changed our itinerary. Here is a link to the actual itinerary, if you are interested:

Ed and Bonnie's Around-the-World Itinerary

More to follow as we get closer to lift-off. Stay tuned...