Oh no. Don’t tell me.
Don’t tell you what?
Don’t tell you’ve booked more travel plans for this year?
Okay, I won’t.
But you have, haven’t you?
Well, the title’s a bit of a giveaway.
Back in October of last year I wrote about our travel plans for 2023 and how they were complete. And in my defence, as things stood, at that time they were. The reasons were that I had more time off than my wife and the extra time would be something I’d use to sort out the house or garden or something. Things changed a little in December for reasons I won’t go into, but the upshot of that was that we’ve since had the situation that our holiday allowance was far more aligned. This meant – and it’s taken me this long to suddenly realise it – that we could squeeze another week’s break in somewhere.
Our existing travel plans were reasonably spaced out around the year so we had two options to give us sensible gaps either side for actual work: either late May or early-to-mid December. We favoured late May as it was bang in the middle of two trips six weeks either side of it; without a break there it would mean three months working before some rest. And we fancied something non-cruise-related just for a change.
We fancied something non-cruise-related right up until the point we found out that the ideal week for a break was half term for most schools, and that meant that all the foreign trips we were looking at (we quite liked the idea of Morocco or Tunisia) were close to double the price were we to choose to travel two weeks earlier or later. Other dates didn’t suit us, and the principle of the thing annoyed us. Travel companies will say something like “Ah, yes, supply and demand” and wave their fingers around and hope you don’t think about that too much because the truth of the matter is closer to “demand and extort”. There’s no financial reason why staying in a hotel one week is twice the price of staying in the same hotel the next week. They’ve been getting away with gouging people and they’ll continue to do so.
More local trips in the UK were similarly exploitatively-priced, and the UK isn’t the enchantingly quaint and interesting place it used to be before a decade of Tories turned us all against one another. That’s right! You thought there wouldn’t be any politics in this post but boom! Here comes Mark with another annoying slap back to reality. You can’t keep me from talking about politics. You can can try but I am just too fucking annoying.
Where was I? Oh yes.
When we fell back to looking at cruise options for the same period we didn’t see anything like this disparity in prices so, I’m sorry to report, and I know this will be a shock, we’ve ended up booking another cruise.
It’s a cruise line we’re familiar with, and a cruise line we’ll be cruising with in just a couple of weeks as well, but it’s a ship we’ve not cruised on before. It’s also a country we’ll be cruising to that we’re familiar with, but half the ports we last visited back in 2013 (a whole decade ago; yikes!), and the other half will be brand new.
Oh, Mark, you’re teasing us with these little clues. But enough already. Tell us who you’re cruising with, you verbose bastard.
Will do.
The end of May will see us try out P&O’s Britannia heading back up to the Norwegian fjords. We cruised to the fjords last year on Sky Princess but no ports will be repeated from that trip, which is nice. Given the upcoming restrictions on cruising to Norway’s UNESCO heritage fjords that comes into force in a couple of years time which will see a lot of the more spectacular views removed from cruise itineraries, this gives us one more chance to see them before you’re not allowed to from the ships any longer. We’ll also be able to see what we think about Britannia. Our first experience on a Royal-class cruise ship (Royal Princess in 2016) wasn’t great – didn’t like the layout, didn’t like the balconies, terrible staff – but we were more impressed on Regal Princess in 2021, and it will be interesting to see the P&O take on the design, particularly given our polar opposite views about P&O with respect to their older and newer vessels.
Our now-definitely-completed-I-swear travel plans for 2023 look a little like this:
Not too shabby.
So, two weeks today is when we commence the first of the five we’ve got planned.
We haven’t, of course, ruled out weekend jaunts somewhere not too far in the UK when they’re sensibly-priced. The steamship experiences out of Southampton were fun last year and one of those has had its first part written up about and posted on the site yesterday. The Warner breaks have been convenient and enjoyable too. I wouldn’t rule out us doing either or both of those again at some point.
That will bring this blog post to a close. I have published a few articles since the last one but I’ll save them and whatever else I add in the meantime for the next of my blog round-ups.