Getting Ready

SCUBA Diving is a part of our future

Upon seeing the announcement for the MSC world cruise, I clicked to view the route and stops. The bucket-list destinations amazed me, and I promptly sent the link to Jessica. She swiftly responded with "Let's go"!

We scheduled a call with a MSC concierge, and had a conversation about expectations. It seemed to fit our comfort level, and was far enough out that we could space out payments and complete paying by the deadline, three months before departure. With that completed, we had to get our life sorted out to take the 4 month adventure. How would we pay the mortgage/utilities and other ongoing expenses while traveling for 4 and a half months?

Somehow, we managed to pull it off! Jessica became SCUBA certified with a month to spare. We located a nice family to rent our house and went through the process of packing all our belongings (excluding the furniture), boxing them up, and moving some items to the shed, attic, basement, and a rented storage unit. We completed all this while both of us were trying to finish our jobs and navigate the holiday season.

We left 6 days before the cruise departed from Genoa, Italy to allow for any travel snafu's, which, thankfully, we did not encounter! Until I said something about it in Milan, and then our baggage didn't come out to baggage claim, and it turned out that something got caught and jammed the delivery conveyor and we and a few others had to wait a half hour or so to receive our bags. Did we travel light? We'd planned to, but we succomed to temptation and brought enough stuff for 4 1/2 months! I even packed a small guitar amp in my suitcase! So here we are in Genoa, and our boat sails tomorrow! I don't know what to expect, but we have open minds and haven't killed each other yet...