Change #2

The planning shifts direction once again...

It seems my budgeting went astray in my last lot of plans. I had anticipated that flights near Christmas would cost extra. I hand't anticipated how much extra. I was thinking maybe $500 per person, but Emirates have started releasing December fares, and the moment December 1st rolls in, they go up by $2000/person. And that's not even for the ones near Christmas!

Europe for Christmas -- no longer achievable :(.

This leaves us with two options -- travel at a different time, or go somewhere else. Since I'm still into the idea of going away in December, this leaves us with the somewhere else option.

This in turn led me to remember plans my mother and I had a few years back, in the messy aftermath of my parent's divorce when anything family was all a bit too awkward. We saw a Christmas cruise of the Pacific islands and decided that was definitely the way to go. All the food and cheer of the holiday season, without the cooking and cleaning. We never ended up going (she took me to Bali for my 21st instead, an equally unpopular move with the rest of my family, but it was what I wanted) but the idea stuck in my mind.

So when Europe became impractical, I suggested the cruise to M. He loves the idea.

It is a very different kind of holiday, both from what we were planning and from what we're used to. I'm accustomed to ambitious, planning-heavy adventures, where this is something that requires virtually no independent input from the traveller. We tell them what we want, and they do the rest. It seems quite a novelty, but I think at the end of what is already shaping up as an eventful year, it will be just what we need.