An OZing We Will Go

Crystal and I are sitting here twiddling our thumbs waiting, waiting, waiting to walk out the door.  With the time change last night, we got up earlier.  This just adding an extra hour to our wait.  Still need to close my suitcase and maybe take one or two more things out.  Just not sure. 

We booked this cruise in July 2009, so all our planning has been completed up to this point.  Some plans can change and that's ok, to a certain extent.  Lucky for us, we aren't on Qantas going over to Sydney.  Regent put us on United... this is my first UA flight, so the airmiles will have to go toward something else.  And I'm sitting here with over 100,000 Delta miles.  Such is life! 

Our travel companion, Betty flew over on Friday, so she is already in Sydney, sans luggage.  At least she has a few more days for her "mishandled" luggage to reach her before Wednesday when all we fly to Cairns to the Great Barrier Reef area.  Crystal and I both have GBR clothes and bathing suits in our carry-ons.

Not much else to say except, "I'M READY TO GET OUT OF HERE..... NOW!!"

Yes, I am excited.....

Left Home Today

Today, Friday, November 5, 2010, I began my journey to Australia and New Zealand.  I awoke around 2:30am with a sore throat.  Great, all I can see is the immigration employees in Sydney Airport excluding me from entering the country and Crystal leaving me alone, sick at the airport.  I then got up, took an Airborne and did a Zicam swab and went back to me.  Couldn't sleep, so watched TV for a bit.  Tried to sleep be had a bad dream.  Finally I got up at 7am, took a shower and did odd jobs around the house.  At 8:30am I was on the phone to my favorite nurse at the doctor's office telling her my dilemma .  She said, "Beth, you're leaving on your trip today, right?  Get in here, we'll give you a shot and meds."  Thank you, Kristy!!  What a doll.  That emergency elevated.

Went back home and finished my chores and my good buddy, Celia picked me up, took me to the Wilson Train Station.  A permanent passenger (on left with male friend) is seen sitting by the tracks each day.

more later.....

Travel Quotes

Along the way, I've seen and adopted many travel quotes.  This post will be updated when I acquire new quotes that fit me.  If I know who made this quote famous, I will surely identify them.

"It's there, let's go see it." - Beth Punte

"No one with a thick passport can have a small mind." anonymous

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson 

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness."  - Mark Twain

"There are only two classes. First class and no class."  ~David O. Selznick

"A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between countries, so the officials can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly." ~Lemony Snicket

"The untold want by life and land ne'er granted, / Now Voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."   This quote comes from one of my favorite movies, Now, Voyager with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid, is a Walt Whitman poem "The Untold Want."

"Travel makes one modest.  You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world." - Scott Cameron

"I haven't been everywhere but it's on my list"..... - Susan Sontag

An OZing I Will Go

I leave the house in four days... That means I have to wake up 3 more mornings.  Excited and a little scared.  Crystal and I will have the best time.  We meet up with Betty in Sydney and have lunch with our Aussie friend, Lee.  We met Lee virtually a few years back on our favorite cruise message board, Luxury Cruise Talk. Then we were fortunate to meet Lee and her son, Michael in person on our Alaskan cruise last September.

Here is our cruise itinerary.Australia-New Zealand Itinerary  (I apologize for the formatting issues.)

Date	Departure	Arrival	Transportation

Nov 16	6:00 pm		Sydney	board the Navigator
Nov 17			At Sea
Nov 18		8:00 am	Melbourne, Australia	Great Ocean Road
Nov 19	6:00 pm		Melbourne, Australia
Nov 20			At Sea
Nov 21	6:00 pm	8:00 am	Hobart, Australia
Nov 22			At Sea
Nov 23			At Sea
Nov 24	Milford	Sound	to Dunedin	overland tour-off ship
Nov 25	6:00 pm	9:00 am	Dunedin, NZ
Nov 26	6:00 pm	8:00 am	Christchurch, NZ
Nov 27	4:00 pm	8:00 am	Wellington, NZ
Nov 28	6:00 pm	8:00 am	Napier, NZ
Nov 29			At Sea
Nov 30	5:00 pm	8:00 am	Tauranga, NZ
Dec 1		8:00 am	Auckland, NZ
Dec. 3			fly to USA

My First Trip to Europe

Beth in Florence, Italy 1970

At the age of 17, between my Junior and Senior years in high school, my grandfather took my brother,age 20 my cousin, Scott, age 16 any myself on a bus trip around Europe.  My mom and aunt, we call her Cioc, wanted to go too. So all six of us flew to London (my first case of jetlag) for a seventeen night American Express tour of Europe.  If you remember the old movie, If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, (1969), that's how our trip was.  Each day we got up, quickly packed, ate breakfast and got on our big bus.  My fondest memories of that trip are picking up a slight British accent after 3 days in London, going to my first discotheque in Lucerne, Switzerland and dancing with a greasy Italian guy and walking down a street in Rome late-late or early-early and swinging around the light pole.  Two or three of us did that out of a group of 12-15.  We'd been to a few bars that night too..... hey, I was with my mother!!  Another fun memory is being in Nice, France and looking out of our window late at night.  Our hotel was in the red light district.  My mom and I watched the ladies attracting men and the guys almost running after the women down the street.  My mom knocked on the wall to my aunt next door saying, "Did you see that one?"  I guess that was my first exposure to prostitution. 

My First Cruise

One year out of college and living and working on my own, some girlfriends and I decided to go on a cruise over Easter.  The Flavia carried 900 passengers and sailed 3 nights from Ft. Lauderdale to Nassau and Freeport.  The 4 of us were in a small inside cabin with bunk beds.  As I remember, I was on the bottom.  Our bathroom was like a tiny closet and flooded whenever we took showers.

The first night out was rocky and I didn't even make it to dinner.... I did make to the  infirmary for a seasickness shot, then to bed.  So I missed the first night.

Here is a link to my 71 night Discovery Collection cruise on the Regent Seven Seas Navigator in 2008.

Adult Adventures With My Mom

During college and after, my mom... we called her Bob, and I began traveling in the summer and sometimes sneaking a trip in during the school year.  As an educator, it was difficult to travel between the end of August and mid June, but a few times we did get in some fun trips.

Bob and I drove down to Savannah one hot August and spent 3 nights there.  We took a Grey Line tour, saw the lovely homes and a drive in the Bonaventure Cemetery, famous for headstones.  The most memorable headstone is on the front cover of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.  We walked and shopped along the waterfront and I remember having a nice dinner at the Pirates Restaurant.   We didn't know about Paula Dean then, but if we had, we would have been in line at her restaurant.

What I've Done and Where I've Been

Here is a link to the 71 Night Cruise I took with Crystal in 2008. http://beths71nightcruise.blogspot.com/

The first trip I remember is going to Williamsburg, VA probably at the age of 4. My mom, dad, brother and I would travel each summer to different locales close to where we lived. At that time we were in Baltimore, MD. My brother has all the slides and yellow Kodak picture books from my childhood, so I need to get some pictures to post.

After we moved to Ohio, I remember trips to Michigan and New Hampshire.  The only memory I have from the Michigan trip is that we were not able to get to Mackinac Island due to heavy fog.  After seeing the movie, Somewhere in Time, with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, I wished I had been there.  The New Hampshire trip coincided with a conference my dad had at a small college.  We hadn't made any motel reservations, but ended up in a small cabin on a lake.  During the day, my brother would fish or we would swim in the lake.  Mom cooked the fish that Carroll caught, though he didn't eat any.

That was the summer I learned to play gin rummy and solitaire... the old fashioned way, with cards.  Gin rummy became a favorite game in our house.  We all played with Bob.  When coming home for a weekend visit, I could hardly get in the door and the cards were shuffled and a few games played.  We would always play after breakfast and lunch to discuss our daily plans.  Bob would always pack a deck of card on trips so we could play on airplane rides or lull times in our hotel rooms or ship suites.  As family members can attest, it was hard to beat Bob!

At the age of 10 my Grandma and Pop Pop took my to Canada and New York. Going to Quebec and NYC was fascinating at that age, and still today. I had a chance to return to Quebec on a cruise a few years ago and revisited Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré and memories of what I saw with my grandparents returned. 

My first solo airplane ride was at the age of 16 flying from Raleigh-Durham to Cincinnati to visit friends.