We leave this Saturday. Holland America Line (HAL) is sending out almost daily changes. We lost Israel and picked up Cyprus. We haven’t been to either country but I did want to at least step foot in Israel. Another trip. An advantage of booking excursions through HAL is that when this happens, they make the change. Trip advisor and its subsidiary Viator also make this quite easy. A refund for our Israel excursion was quickly made. I quickly booked an excursion in Cyprus but it was refunded about 20 minutes later. HAL offered nothing and nothing could be booked on trip advisor after we received our refund. We will just have to wing it.
Speaking of the pandemic. We did find another couple that refused to stop living. Tim and Kelley Daley. I met Tim at MSU back in the 1970s. We both lived in Wilson Hall and enjoyed an occasional Mai Tai. Kelley was also an MSU student and they married after college. Tim and I kept in touch with at least one email every decade and more recently we discovered that we both lived on Grosse Ile. They will be joining us on this trip and we are looking forward to their companionship. We each planned our own excursion and then compared. We each have our own interests and some of them match!
HAL is requiring everyone on the ship to be vaccinated. All passengers. All crew. Masks too. Covid test will be given on site when we check in. Greece is requiring a special “Passenger Locator Form” to be filled out before guests can enter. This form contains a listing of places you have traveled to prior to Greece along with other Covid questions and required answers. I am guessing that all of this information will be handled much like the forms that one fills out for US Customs when returning home. All kinds of detailed information about purchases is required. At the fork in the customs line, those claiming items purchased line up to pay a tax. (these are the goood people) The other line gives the form to the tall guy with the goofy grin. When his collection of hand written completed forms gets very large, he turns and gently eases them into the trash (or is it recycle) bin. The form is nothing more than a way to intimidate people into claiming items they purchased for taxing. I know that these are not read by anyone. Mine are never legible and my name is Foghorn Leghorn. As more people figure this out, some entry points do an inspection of bags by lottery. Push the button when you arrive at customs. It will display a red or green light randomly. Green = good. Move along. Red = bag inspection. Sorry, that lamp made to look like a woman’s leg you purchased in Amsterdam requires you to pay Uncle Sam a tax. I imagine all of the collected Covid information will follow the route into the collected form bin. People in charge like forms. At least they like to collect them.
HAL keeps rolling out more promotional items. I earned $250.00 to spend on the ship by owning 100 shares of Carnival Cruise Line stock. Carnival is the parent company of HAL. The benefit of returning to the same cruise line is earning mariner points. We are now at level III. Each level offers complimentary services. Points are earned by each day of the cruise. The world cruise earned us a boat load of points. We were gone 116 days. The free laundry on level IV is a goal for us.
The plane ride is never something I look forward too. The seats aren’t comfortable enough to sleep on so I have to tough it out by watching non-stop movies. We fly to Dulles then on to Athens. The second leg is almost 10 hrs. I’m starting to mentally prepare.
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